ON TEN PLAYS OF SHAKESPEARE 



ON TEN 
PLAYS OF SHAKESPEARE 



BY 



STOPFOKD A. BROOKE 



I 



NEW YORK 

HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY 

1916 



■H>t - 



Printed in Great Britain 



CONTENTS 



1. MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM 


1 


II. ROMEO AND JULIET . 


. 35 


III. RICHARD II. . 


. 71 


IV. RICHARD III. 


. 100 


V. MERCHANT OF VENICE 


. 127 


VI. AS YOU LIKE IT 


. 155 


VII. MACBETH .... 


. 180 


VIII. CORIOLANUS .... 


, 221 


IX. WINTER'S TALE 


. 253 


X. THE TEMPEST 


, 284 



MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM 

Midsummer Night's Dream belongs, probably, to the 
winter of 1595, and was made, it has been said, to cele- 
brate a marriage. This may well be so ; it has a bridal 
atmosphere. Though the affairs of love are fantastically 
tangled in it and their music jangled, even in fairyland, 
yet in the end the tangle is resolved, and the marriage- 
bells are tuneful. 

It is a comedy of love. About four years before, in 
1591, Shakespeare had written a tragedy of love in Romeo 
and Juliet. To begin this book with the earlier play 
would have been more historical, but not wiser. Romeo 
and Juliet is the kind of love-tragedy a young man writes 
in order to dramatise his pleasure with some imagined 
sorrow. Shakespeare did not write it out of any personal 
gloom or any deep knowledge of the trouble of the world. 
It was written to try his eager and happy hand at tragedy; 
and a youthful exuberance frequently emerges through 
its sorrows. Few things are more different than the 
tragic spirit in Romeo and Juliet, which was in the story 
but not in Shakespeare, and the tragic spirit in Lear and 
Othello, which was in himself and then embodied in the 
tragedies. The real Shakespeare at this time was full to \ 
the brim with the joyous spirit of youth. And Mid- 
summer Night's Dream represents the actual temper of 
his soul far more truly than Romeo and Juliet. I have 
therefore chosen to begin with it. 

Delight in life; pleasure in himself, and in mankind; 

A 



2 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

sympathy with brightness more than with sorrow; an 
enkindling happiness ; were, in spite of his tragedies, the 
very root of Shakespeare. Having power and love and a 
sound mind, he could, naturally, play with human life; 
nor did his power to do this prevent his sympathy with 
its pain, or dim the clear eyes with which he saw its 
miseries. On the contrary, he owed to the deep-seated 
joyf ulness in him the sanity of his judgment of life, the 
unbiassed justice with which he weighed its good and evil 
in the balance, the clear sight he had of physical and 
moral evil. It is the cheerful poet who sees the gloom 
most lucidly, most wisely. 

When grimness or sulks at life get down to the 
centre of a man, they disease his judgment, weaken his 
intelligence, dim his sight, disenable his feeling; and, if 
he be an artist, enfeeble his grip of his subject, disperse 
his concentration, deprive him of that creative apartness 
from his materials which enables him to use them as he 
pleases for the making of a new thing. He loses, that 
is, the divine command of his genius, not only over the 
comedy of life, but also over its tragedy. Deeply as 
Shakespeare felt the woe, wickedness, and weakness of 
humanity, he was still their master. If he was in them, 
he was also beyond them, and in this twofold relation to 
them lay his artistic mastery of tragedy. It was the 
same with Sophocles, and it is this which makes him 
greater than Euripides. This power to stand outside as 
well as inside of human sorrow belonged to Shakespeare, 
because at the deepest root of him was, I repeat, delight 
in life ; even rapture — the word is not too strong — with the 
playfulness of its spring and the fulness of its summer. 

Midsummer Night's Bream is Shakespeare at lyric play 
with human life ; and also with the beautiful life of the 
natural world. As such, it represents the constant, even 
the dominant, spirit of Shakespeare's nature more truly 



MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM 3 

than his tragedies. These were written at a time when his 
natural gaiety was overwhelmed either by personal trouble, 
or by a transient cynicism, or by the pressure of some deep 
conviction of the sorrow and sins of the world. He saw, 
he even touched, it seems, in that hot and eager world, 
the darkest depths of grief and crime, of weakness, 
dishonour, of tyrannic passions, and deadly mistake. 
None have seen them more profoundly, but even in their 
blackest gloom he created a certain brightness. Comedy, 
sometimes kindly, sometimes bitter, even cynical, glides 
in amidst the tragedy; he can still disport himself a 
little. As the years brought him comfort, he passed out 
of the darkness into clear light. His ineradicable pleasure 
in humanity, the sweetness and delight of it, survived its 
woes and terrors; and the latest plays abide in the clear 
atmosphere and lovely colour of a gentle, bright, and 
peaceful sunset. They have their still philosophy, their 
wise even solemn experience, their melodious forgiving- 
ness, their mystic touch on life and death — grave and 
dignified elements which his passage through the 
tragedies of mankind had left in his soul. But that 
passage through the valley of the shadow of death had 
not destroyed but confirmed his bright sanity, his sweet 
sympathy with the love and ardour of youth, and his 
happiness as he looked round on the world. He had be- 
come quiet, but his quietude was gay and tender. He still 
retained the power to play graciously with human life. He 
still loved Nature and played with her. Ariel, the lively 
spirit of the air, is as charming as Oberon and Titania. 
the spirits of the moonlit earth. Caliban is as good an 
image of the dark coarseness of Nature as Puck is of its 
mockery of us. The natural description in Winters Tale 
is even more imaginatively felt than that in the Mid- 
summer Night's Dream. The love of Miranda is more 
delicate than that of Juliet; the loving of Florizel and 



4 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

Perdita is as impassioned, though rarely so outspoken, as 
that of Romeo and Juliet, nor is the love of Rosalind 
and Orlando more simple, happy, and chivalrous. And 
the playfulness of his latest work is not less, though it is 
different. There is even a delightful roguishness, full of 
odd wisdom, in a character like Autolycus, which is better 
and nearer to humanity than the mirth of the clowns in 
the earlier plays with whom we might compare him. 

Thus, the central brightness, the sportive happiness at 
the root of Shakespeare's character and art lasted when 
he had emerged from tragedy. Therefore, though Romeo 
and Juliet preceded the Dream, I have begun with the 
Dream. It belongs to the earliest, to the most enduring 
element in the soul of Shakespeare. 

Certain elements of the play harmonise with the time at 
which it was written, a time in which the poetic properties 
and interests of the past were recovered for the imagi- 
nation, in which new poetic materials were discovered. 
England, after a long drought, had again felt the freshness 
of the dew of Romance, and heard the soft falling of its 
rain. The imagination of the people, re-awakened, urged 
them into the passionate life of discovery, of adventure, of 
intellectual pursuit of the unknown. And in Spenser's 
hands, and here in Shakespeare, all the living creatures 
of the woodland and the waters in whom Romance had 
delighted, returned to enliven Nature and to take their 
kindly interest in humanity. The Nature-spirit in 
French, Anglo-Norman, and Celtic romance rose again; 
and Shakespeare, born into it and rejoicing in it, made 
a new world for its new form. Among remnants of 
romantic tales like Huon of Bordeaux, and among the 
folk- traditions of the people, he found the dry bones of 
Titania, Oberon, and Robin Goodfellow, and breathed into 
their nostrils the breath of life. It was a great thing to 

perfect the form of the rediscovered fairyland; and he 

V 



MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM 5 

did it with such mastery that the fairies have never died. 
Even modern science, with all its own wonders, has not 
driven them out of the field, nor does it wish to banish 
them. It has evolved a science out of them, and not 
spoilt them. Yet, living as he made them, Shakespeare, 
with his luminous sanity, makes them creatures of a 
dream. 

Along with this revival of romance, there was the 
recovery of the classics. This was the work of the 
Renaissance, in the English youth of which great move- 
ment Shakespeare was born. Its energy, repressed by 
the bigotry of the reigns of Edward VI. and Mary, broke 
into a rapid and fertilising stream when Elizabeth was 
well seated on x the throne. It was not long before Greece 
and Rome wielded over intellectual and imaginative life 
as great, perhaps even a greater dominion than romance ; 
and men like Shakespeare, who were not scholars, enjoyed 
the stimulation of the classic writers and of the history of 
the great doings and men of the past in the host of trans- 
lations which lay on every bookstall. Among these was 
Plutarch's Lives, and the first of them is the life of Theseus. 
It crept into Shakespeare's imagination, and one of its 
incidents supplied him with the framework of this play. 
The subject fell in thus with one of the literary fashions 
of the day, so fashionable that even the working classes 
in the towns were interested in classical stories. They 
saw them in a hundred pageants, and it is quite Eliza- 
bethan that weavers, joiners, bellows-makers and the rest, 
should choose the story of Pyramus and Thisbe for their 
rude representation. 

Moreover, the classical movement at this time was not 
altogether apart from the romantic. The legendary in 
the life of Theseus slipt easily into the world of romance 
and into the stories of fairyland. A kind of amal- 
gamation took place, such as had happened before in 



6 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

the romantic cycles of Troy and Alexander. There is 
the strangest mingling in Midsummer Night's Dream, of 
Greece and Faerie, of the survivals of romance and the 
impulses of the Renaissance. The mediseval fairies meet 
to celebrate and bless the marriage of Theseus and 
Hippolyta. It is hinted that Oberon was the lover of 
Hippolyta, and that Titania, herself in love with Theseus, 
was jealous of his amours with Mgle, Antiope, and 
Ariadne. History has no chronology, and time scarcely 
seems to exist in this imaginative world. Even the new 
names of the shepherds and shepherdesses in the Eliza- 
bethan pastoral are introduced. Oberon takes the shape 
of Corin, and verses love to amorous Phyllida. Such a 
lively mixture is the play. 

These literary tendencies of the day — the classical, the 
romantic, the pastoral — are used by Shakespeare exactly 
as a young poet of genius, without scholarship, would 
use them. But the Euphuist element, so conspicuous in 
Love's Labour 's Lost, is scarcely here. Shakespeare had all 
but got rid of it, and we meet it no more in his work. 

Another element in the play is also new, at least in 
form. Mixed up with the heroic personages and the 
fairies, with the classical and the romantic, are the ' rude 
mechanic patches/ whose doings form a piece of real life. 
Shakespeare has got down to the working men of the 
lanes and courts of Elizabethan London. It is true they 
are supposed to be Athenians, but they were drawn from 
the life. And, indeed, I suspect they were not far from a 
true picture of the Athenian working man, so curiously 
does Shakespeare's piercing genius enable him to repre- 
sent not the particular but the universal characteristics 
of any class of men with whom he deals. None of those 
who meet in Quince's house say anything which might 
not have been said by an Athenian as well as by an 
Elizabethan working man at a time when, literature being 



MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DEEAM 7 

the vogue, fragments of culture would filter down to the 
uneducated classes and be travestied by them. These 
poor folk are vitally interested in their play. They are 
inventive of means, properties, and suggestive pageantry. 
They believe in all they do. And they never step out of 
their own atmosphere. This is a piece of realism, and it 
opened an old vein in English literature in a new way../ 
It is said that Shakespeare did not care for the common *"~ 
folk. He did not think them fit to govern, but he had a 
true sympathy for them, an affectionate intimacy with 
their manners, their humour, and their views of life. And 
his new realism of the poor has never ceased to be a living 
element in English literature. It began with Langland 
and Chaucer. It died away. It rose again in Shake- 
speare and the dramatists. Ever since then it has ebbed 
and flowed, and to-day it is stronger than ever in fiction 
and in poetry. 

Another element in the play was purely of Shakespeare's 
time, and of his own youth. It was the prominence of 
love. The age was the age of love-poetry. Even the 
imaginative prose was concerned with love as its chief 
subject. But the poets were immersed in it. They made 
books of sonnets on this passion, and were then called 
amourists. Sidney, Spenser, Daniel, Drayton, Watson, 
and many others echoed one another in this form of 
literature. Moreover, in the resurrection of national joy 
and honour, in the new confidence England had in 
herself, she was young again, and of course she sang of 
love. It is the subject of youth. And Shakespeare, him- 
self young, and having the buoyant joy of genius in its 
exercise, turned to love as the prominent element in his 
dramas when they became quite original ; and Love's 
Labour 's Lost, the Tivo Gentlemen of Verona, Romeo and 
Juliet, even the Merchant of Venice (though that play 
is of a larger dramatic scope), show with what variety 



8 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

in his earlier period he treated the affairs of love. Nor 
did he cease to treat them even when the history of 
his country claimed his interest, or when tragedy laid 
her grave hand upon his shoulder. As to the latest plays, 
they are full of the tender loveliness of youthful and 
married love. 
\ This play, written for a marriage, is, naturally, con- 
cerned with love. Theseus and Hippolyta image the 
sober love of middle age, with here and there a touch 
of passion. They have no difficulties, no trouble. The 
tragedies of love, except those arising from jealousy, 
belong, for the most part, to youth and the beginnings of 
old age. f In middle age the great outside interests of the 
world modify into quiet that tyrannic passion. [ Theseus 
turns at once from Hippolyta to the business of the state. 
Hippolyta can philosophise with ease on the vagaries of 
love. And both, not caring for the loneliness with one 
another which youthful love desires, are delighted with 
the pleasures of the chase. They rise early in the morn- 
ing to follow the hounds. Their talk is not of love, but 
of bygone hunting, of their dogs, their breed, their 
musical cry. 

With the young lovers it is different. Love, as he is in 
Spenser's mask of Cupid, is a cruel, capricious god to 
them. Even Puck disapproves of his conduct — 

Cupid is a knavish lad, 

Thus to make poor females mad. 

Lysander loves Hermia, and Demetrius Helena. But 
Demetrius forsakes Helena for Hermia, and hence are 
born jealousies, furies, quarrels, dissolutions of friendship, 
death or a convent to Hermia. Under love's cruel driving, 
Helena betrays Lysander and Hermia to Demetrius, 
and is a traitor to honour. Under it the friendship of 
Helena and Hermia is dissolved, and Demetrius and 
Lysander seek each the other's death. Love sets them 



MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM 9 

into madness and confusion. Then with a sudden turn, 
in the midst of the dream-night, Shakespeare turns to 
laugh at the folly of youthful love. He makes it de- 
pend on the juice of an herb, as if it were only a chance, 
as if it lay only in the eye. Lysander hates the woman 
he loved, Demetrius loves the woman he hated. Helena 
and Hcrmia are driven wild with pain. Titania herself 
is a victim, and falls in love with Bottom crowned with 
an ass's head. All is mockery of Love as the maddener, 
the god of unreason. Only Elizabeth escapes, 'the fair 
vestal throned by the West.' She is 'fancy free,' and 
this isolation of her makes the compliment Shakespeare 
paid her almost as exquisite as the poetry in which it 
is made. Finally, the play, the rude mechanics' play, is 
a love-tragedy as deep as that of Borneo and Juliet. 
But it is turned into laughter, and makes the sorrows 
of love the tragical mirth of an hour. The note of all 
this treatment of the subject of love is struck in the 
first act by Lysander's phrase 

The course of true love never did run smooth, 

then by Lysander's statements of the crosses of love, then 
by Hermia's answers, and then by the soliloquy of Helena 
at the end of the first scene. Nothing can be more 
characteristic of the time, of its literary life, of the mastery 
of love as a subject, of Shakespeare's sportive youthful- 
ness, than this hither and thither of love in various 
fantasies. ' Nowadays,' says Bottom, ' reason and love 
keep little company together.' 

Then there is the scenery. We have no descriptive 
hints as to what Shakespeare expected the audience 
to see in Athens with the ' intellectual eye.' It is quite 
different with regard to the wood where the fairies are. 
This is not deliberately described, but by scattered 
touches, in the midst of the dramatic interest, Shakespeare 



10 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

suggests its landscape, and we, for ourselves, create it. 
That is his way of natural description ; it is the way of 
genius. We have walked through this wood again and 
again, and know many of its recesses. We even know 
its outskirts, for we have companied with Theseus and 
Hippolyta when they came to its edge to hunt in the 
morning. There lies the western valley enlivened with 
the Spartan hounds and foresters, and there climbs the 
mountain-top which overlooks the valley and the wood, 
lit with the ' yellow gold ' of the morning which Oberon 
' oft made sport with.' The wood is full of flowers ; faint 
primrose beds, cowslips, oxlips, wild thyme, musk-roses, 
eglantine, honeysuckle; of hawthorn-brakes and briers, 
barky elms, great oak-trees, dewy glades, wild under- 
growth ; and the moon shines brightly over it. The to- 
and-fro of the wandering lovers, of the roving fairies 
brings us, time after time, into, we imagine, every dell 
and clearing of it. 

This was the landscape, and there was not a groundling 
in the pit who did not see it more clearly than we see it 
in the elaborate decoration of our stage. We are held 
down to the scene-painter's sight of it, and that limits our 
self-creativeness. But every one in Shakespeare's theatre 
made from the poet's suggestions his own wood out of his 
own memories of the country. In such a wood Shake- 
speare may often have wandered on the outskirts of the 
London of his day, but he saw it through eyes which 
had looked with the delight of a youth on the woods 
round Stratford; and Charlecote's memories enter into 
this wood near Athens, and into the forest of As You 
Like It. 

It is easy from this play to see how keen was his enjoy- 
ment of Nature, and with what an observant eye he 
watched her doings. Nor was his eye less keen for the 
animal life in the wood. The squirrels racing up the trees, 



MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM 11 

the ox stretching his neck to the yoke, the crows fatted 
with the murrion flock, the snake with enamelled skin, 
the rere-mice with leathern wing, the owl that wonders 
at the quaint spirits of the fairies, the hedgehogs, spiders, 
beetles, 

The ousel-cock, so black of hue, 

With orange-tawny bill, 

The throstle with his note so true, 

The wren with little quill ; 

The finch, the sparrow, and the lark, 

The plain-song cuckoo gray, 

the lark so tunable to the shepherd's ear, the wild geese 

the creeping fowler eyes, the russet-pated choughs, who, 

Eising and cawing at the gun's report, 
Sever themselves, and madly sweep the sky ; 

the red-hipped humble-bee, the fiery glow-worm's eyes, 

the painted butterflies, 1 are seen as clearly as Browning 

saw them, and with the same eye for their colour. To the 

poetic observer of beasts and birds, colour is their first 

distinction. Then he sees the other marks which isolate 

them from one another, and then the points in which 

each species is excellent. Shakespeare's eye, trained in 

the country, knew the fine points of animals as clearly as 

he knew those of men and women. In Venus and Adonis 

every point of excellence in a horse is mentioned. The 

description of the hare, ' poor Wat, far off upon a hill,' who 

Stands on his hinder legs with listening ear, 

is as true and vigorous ; but neither of these is finer than 

that of the dogs in this play — 

My hounds are bred out of the Spartan kind, 
So flew'd, so sanded ; and their heads are hung 
With ears that sweep away the morning dew ; 
Crook-knee'd, and dew-lapp'd like Thessalian bulls ; 
Slow in pursuit, but match'd in mouth like bells, 
Each under each. 

It is like a picture by Velasquez. 

1 All these descriptive phrases are taken from the play, and so are the 
flowers and trees mentioned above. 



12 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

The form of the play is simple. The first act and 
the last are of the waking day, of real life. In the 
midst is the night, and the fanciful life of a dream. 
And added to this vivid contrast is the episode of the 
comic tragedy of Pyramus, which, in a certain sense, 
combines the real and the imaginative life — for the 
working men of Athens are lifted above their daily toil 
into an ideal world by their rude aspiration to art- 
creation. Their play knits by its object, which is to do 
honour to Theseus' marriage, the last act to the first. 
Finally the marriage of all the lovers is accomplished, and 
the fairies bless the marriage-bed in lovely poetry. 

Theseus and Hippolyta are children of the day, of 
clear reason, and practical life. Hippolyta is the sensible 
woman of high rank, with all the natural freedom of a 
great lady, living and thinking in the open air. Fond of 
the chase, she remembers with pleasure how the skies, the 
fountains, seemed all one mutual cry when she bayed the 
bear with Hercules and Cadmus, — an Amazon as well as 
a great lady. She is interested in the story of the night. 
It is ' strange and admirable,' and ' grows to something of 
great constancy.' But she reasons on it clearly. Pier 
curiosity does not carry away her good sense. Theseus 
and she discuss the events of the dream, and the several 
views of the man and the woman are admirably dis- 
tinguished. She has little patience with folly and ignor- 
ance, and is greatly bored with Pyramus and Thisbe. 
' This is the silliest stuff that ever I heard,' she says, with 
her plain intelligence. Theseus sees more deeply. ' The 
best in this kind are but shadows, and the worst are 
no worse, if imagination amend them.' But Hippolyta 
answers quickly. ' It must be your imagination then, 
and not theirs.' Not for a moment is this Queen asleep, 
or fanciful, or in a dream. Yet, though a warrior Queen, 
she does not want a woman's gentleness — 



MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM 13 

I love not to see wretchedness o'ercharged, 
And duty in his service perishing. 

When she hears Bottom mourning over Thisbe, her 
sympathy is awakened, even though the stuff is silly. 
' Eeshrew my heart/ she cries, 'but I pity the man.' 

Theseus is as plainly a King in the daylight. He is in 
love, but his love has no fantasy. Night, he believes, is 
the fairies' time, but he spends it in love or in sleep. He 
turns in a moment from Hippolyta to the business of 
government, more important to him than love. His deep 
respect for Athenian law and precedent, his moderation 
and firmness in judgment, his support, even though he 
pities Hermia, of paternal authority, all mark the man of 
the world and the statesman ; the lucid reasoner, who has 
never been in the land of dreams. He does not believe 
the story of the Night. These matters do not belong to 
cool reason, but to the seething brains of lovers or mad- 
men. The lunatic, the lover, and the poet 

Are of imagination all compact. 

Yet, in that famous passage, he can describe the poet and 
his work better than most, so clear is his sight of things. 
He sees imagination's work in the acting of the poor 
mechanics, and therefore sympathises with them, as is fit 
for a ruler of men. Nor could Shakespeare's noblest men 
speak with more of a royal nature than Theseus does 
when he reasons on the homage offered to kings. Hip- 
polyta has objected to the play being heard. It is not 
kind to these poor folk, for they can do nothing in this 
way, to hear them. ' The kinder we,' says Theseus, 

to give them thanks for nothing. 
Our sport shall he to take what they mistake ; 
And what poor duty cannot do, noble respect 
Takes it in might, not merit. 
Where I have come, great clerks have purposed 
To greet me with premeditated welcomes ; 



14 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

Where I have seen them shiver and look pale, 

Make periods in the midst of sentences, 

Throttle their practis'd accent in their fears, 

And, in conclusion, dumbly have broke off, 

Not paying me a welcome. Trust me, sweet, 

Out of this silence yet I pick'd a welcome ; 

And in the modesty of fearful duty 

I read as much as from the rattling tongue 

Of saucy and audacious eloquence. 

Love, therefore, and tongue-tied simplicity 

In least speak most, to my capacity. 

This is the good manners of a gentleman. It is as wise 
in experience as it is courteous in feeling, clear in reason- 
ing. To the last — and not least when he tells the players, 
'Never excuse, let your epilogue alone' — he is of the 
bright-eyed morning; no king of shadows like Oberon, 
never in a dream. 

Nor are the minor characters in the first act less of 
daylight reality. Egeus, a hateful father, is a plain-spoken 
tyrant. Hermia, when she lays her case before Theseus, 
is very different from Hermia in the dream. Her modest 
good sense, seated in her faithfulness, does not say much 
before the King, but what she says is steadfast and clear. 
Theseus says, 'Demetrius is a worthy gentleman.' 'So 
is Lysander,' she replies. 'In himself he is,' answers 
Theseus, 

But, in this kind, wanting your father's voice, 
The other must be held the worthier. 
Her. I would my father look'd but with my eyes. 

She is admirable in all the rest of the scene : reverent 
to Theseus, even to her father, but fixed as fate in her 
fidelity to her lover, wide awake to the events, and of a 
keen intelligence. 

The same luminous daylight shines over the second 
scene, in Quince's house, where the mechanics order their 
play. These two scenes in the court and the cottage, so 
close to real life, Shakespeare took pains to make unlike 



MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM 15 

a dream. It is only when the lovers are left alone that 
imagination enters, and the talk becomes poetry. Then 
love's high fantastic possesses all they say like a spirit. 
Hermia tells Lysander that she will meet him in the 
wood : a simple statement, but this is how she words it — 

My good Lysander ! 
I swear to thee by Cupid's strongest bow, 
By his best arrow with the golden head, 
By the simplicity of Venus' doves, 
By that which knitteth souls and prospers loves, 
And by that fire which burn'd the Carthage queen, 
When the false Troyan under sail was seen, 
By all the vows that ever men hath broke, — 
In number more than ever women spoke — 
In that same place thou hast appointed me, 
To-morrow truly will I meet with thee. 

This is the way love and youth heighten — ' To be sure 
I'll come' — into poetry. It is followed by that fanciful 
game with words between Lysander and Hermia concern- 
ing the troubles of love. Some have called it unnatural. 
On the contrary, this tossing to and fro of fancies in play 
is quite natural to lovers when they are young. Then, 
since the love of natural beauty is akin to human love, 
the lovers lift into poetry all they say about Nature. For 
them PhGebe beholds 

Her silver visage in the wat'ry glass, 
Becking with liquid pearl the bladed grass, — 

For them the primrose beds are faint where Hermia and 
Helena were wont to lie. 

In this uplifting air of love they are no more of the 
noonday, but of the twilight, half-way to the moonlight 
of the midsummer night, on the skirts of the dream. 
Shakespeare was a master of gradation. The dream-note 
of the next three acts is thus struck, yet it only sounds 
dimly, like a far-off bell. As yet, the fancy of the lovers 
has none of the unreason of a dream. Their speech is 



16 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

clear, their minds awake. But the atmosphere they 
breathe is one that easily changes into dream. 

They sleep, and another day goes by. Then comes the 
Night, the magical midsummer Night, and with it the 
fairy world. The lovers seek the wood, and so do 
the crew of mechanics to rehearse their play. And they 
pass into the dream. The daylight has gone ; the moon- 
light rules. Indeed, the moon is the sky-mistress of the 
play. She is not only the Queen of the Midsummer 
Night ; she is the goddess of the marriage-bed of Theseus 
and Hippolyta, whose first speeches dwell on her. The 
lovers talk of her beauty. Oberon and Titania live in 
her light and breathe its air. Pyramus and Thisbe 
meet in moonshine. The fairies bless Theseus' bed in 
her brightness. All the sentiment of moonlight in a 
million lovers' hearts pervades the play. 

Shakespeare has, with easy power, brought into these 
three acts the mystery, the fantasy, the dimness, and 
the unreason of dreamland. Titania and Oberon resemble 
the stately, graceful creations of our imagination when 
we are asleep. The fairies who attend the Queen are 
like those unfinished, childish fancies, begun and broken 
off, which we see in dreams. Puck is the representative 
of the grotesque, unmoral, unhuman creations (for fancy, 
without will, has no conscience, no humanity) which so 
strangely go and come in dreams. Then, the changes 
of scene, the appearance • and disappearance of the 
personages, cross and recross one another with the be- 
wildering rapidity of a dream. We are even borne 
away in a moment to vast distances, for dreams have 
no geography, and the fairies move as swift as thought 
through space. Oberon comes from the furthest steep 
of India. Titania sits with her friend in the spiced 
Indian air, watching the ships go by. The quarrel is 
about an Indian boy. The introduction of India (a 



MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM 17 

country on which the English then spent a world of 
fancies) adds its own mystery to the dream-atmosphere 
in which the reader moves. 

Then, too, there is in the wood the confusion, disorder, 
and unreason of a dream. The lovers fall in and out of 
love with one another for no cause in the world but the 
mistakes of a mad spirit, who is himself the plaguing 
grotesque of a dream. And time and periods of thought 
are also huddled into confusion. Theseus and Elizabeth 
are living together; romance and the classic world jostle 
one another. Hippolyta has been Oberon's mistress; 
Titania the cause why Theseus betrayed Ariadne. 

We may add to this the wild grotesquerie often charac- 
teristic of dreams. The ass's head placed on Bottom's 
thick skull; the elemental Queen embracing the clown; 
the contrast between the lovely delicacy of Titania's 
language and the clownish wit of Bottom ; the way in 
which he employs the dainty fairies; his own unthinking 
acceptance of the new world into which he has come — 
the most fantastic of Shakespeare's dream-imaginings — 
are all of a fine grotesque. Puck is its image; that ' lob 
of spirits.' He tells of his practical jokes with humanity, 
of his good nature when it is his humour. He does no 
fatal mischief, but he is quite out of sympathy with the 
sorrows of mankind. The jangling of the lovers amuses 
him, though it wins the pity of Oberon, the higher spirit. 
It is he who, in the grotesque of the dream, places the 
ass's head on Bottom and hurries the coarse mechanic 
into the fine-spun life of fairyland. The dream reaches 
its height when the Queen of Dreamland herself is set 
dreaming. Even dreams dream that they dream; and 
Titania cries — 

My Oberon ! what visions have I seen ! 
Methought I was enaniour'd of an ass. 

As to the lovers in the dream, it is a mad business. 

B 



18 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

The men change their sweethearts without asking them- 
selves why they change. It is different with the women. 
So far as love is concerned, they are steadfast throughout 
to what they were outside the magic wood, and I believe 
that Shakespeare meant to make that difference. He had 
, the strongest belief, as a dramatic artist, in the con- 
stancy of women. He has only drawn one inconstant 
woman in all his plays. Here the affections of Helena 
and Hermia for their lovers are quite uninfluenced by the 
magic of the wood, nor do they understand change in 
love. Helena, even when Demetrius begins to love her, 
thinks he is mocking her. She cannot comprehend his 
alteration, even though it is what she most desires. 
Then, Hermia cannot conceive that Lysander should cease 
to love her — 

I '11 believe as soon 
This whole earth may be bor'd, and that the moon 
May through the centre creep, and so displease 
Her brother's noontide with the Antipodes. 

A splendid audacious hyperbole ! Even when Lysander 
calls her ' Ethiop,' i cat,' ' burr,' ' tawny Tartar,' she does 
not believe him. The dream atmosphere has no power 
over the love of the women, but it masters that of the 
, men. Reason or unreason — in Shakespeare — are equally 
powerless to affect a woman's love. 

In other matters, in this realm of dream where 
neither will nor reason reigns, where natural humanity is 
let loose unchecked by social custom or duty, the women 
do change as well as the men. Helena's wooing of 
Demetrius becomes more impassioned, less womanly. 
Maiden reserve all but perishes. Hermia's educated 
quietude and modesty of tone vanish away. Her natural 
fierceness, which has been subdued to courtesy, breaks 
out in this dreamland. ' Out, dog ! out, cur ! ' she cries 
to Demetrius, and Demetrius fears her fierce vein and 



MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM 19 

ceases to follow her. The men have lost all courtesy, gone 
back to uncivilised nature. Their language is unbridled, 
such as we use in dreams when the will is undirected 
by conscience or good manners. All this comes to a 
height at the end of the third act. The old and loving 
friendship of Helena and Hermia is shattered. Helena 
recalls it only to deny it. Hermia, not as yet convinced 
that Lysander loves Helena, is amazed at the heat of 
Helena. But when she is convinced, when Lysander tells 
her he hates her and loves Helena, the latent fierceness 
of her nature, fanned into fury by her love, breaks out 
against Helena — 

O me ! you juggler ! you canker-blossom ! 

You thief of love ! What ! have you come by night 

And stol'n my love's heart from him ? 

Mockery follows after mockery, jealousy after jealousy; 
they attack one another like two women in the market. 
Then Lysander and Demetrius, stung into wrath by the 
atmosphere the fierceness of the women has made them 
breathe, fly also at one another's throats. It is all of the 
unreason of a dream. The men and women are not them- 
selves. Their extraordinary rudeness or shrewishness does 
not belong to their waking characters. 1 

I may say, in passing, that the whole act is an excellent 
piece of stage-management. Reading it, it seems con- 

1 That is, to their characters as formed and modified by education and 
social habits. I cannot say whether Shakespeare intended to say that 
in the atmosphere of the dream they lost those habits and reverted 
to their natural uncultured characters ; but if, as is probable, he did 
not mean that, he writes as if he did — at least, so far as regards the 
women, who have more need to conceal themselves than men. When 
Helena and Hermia meet at last in the wood, and jealousy takes a hand 
in the game, both of them are quite different from their aspect in the 
first act. Hermia is no longer grave, dignified, moderate in speech. She 
has gone back to herself as she was at school — a hot-tempered, bold, 
quick-handed shrew, who terrifies Helena, and who cries, ' Let me 
come to her.' And Helena, who had already been a traitor, now becomes 
her natural cowardly self. When they wake, they revert again to their 
educated selves. 



20 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

fused. I used to think it could not be staged. But when 
I saw it, I recognised that it was written by a master of 
stage-craft. There is not an entrance or exit in this be- 
wildering running in and out of personages which is not 
accounted for, led up to and arranged for easy repre- 
sentation. And Bacon was about as capable of doing 
this as he would have been of smoking a pipe in the face 
of James the First. 

Oberon and Titania, Puck and the fairies, have nothing 
of this unreason in their world or their life. They are in 
their own atmosphere ; the men and women are not. And 
the creation by Shakespeare of this fairy region with its 
indwellers, which, while we are in it, seems wholly reason- 
able and real, is one of his creative triumphs. Its isola- 
tion from humanity is complete. Human nature touches 
us now and then in Oberon's sympathy with the lovers, 
in Titania's love of Theseus, in their meeting to bless the 
marriage-bed; but these touches only make us realise 
more fully that their life and thoughts are separate from 
ours, and, therefore, that when men and women get into 
the fairy realm, they are all astray. To create this im- 
pression was Shakespeare's desire, and it is wonderfully 
done. 

The fairies have no conscience, no morality, and no 
constancy in love. They do what they like without a 
thought of anything being forbid. They are pure children 
of Nature, nay, they are Nature herself; embodiments of 
her forms, of flowers and animals ; and the loftier fairies — 
Oberon and Titania — of her elemental powers. These 
are the spirits in matter, its thoughts perhaps ; and they 
have the swiftness of thought. Puck can ' put a girdle 
round about the earth in forty minutes.' This is a long 
time, but then Puck did not possess full fairy powers, or 
elemental powers. Ariel, on the contrary, comes with a 
thought. Oberon can come from India to Athens in a 



MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM 21 

flash. Being invisible, they have the swiftness which is 
linked in tradition to invisibility, and which science allots 
to the invisible forces of nature. Shakespeare derived 
this part of his conception from old tradition, Arthurian 
or Irish, but he developed it by the metaphysic which, 
deep in his nature, was yet always suffused with poetic 
imagination. 

The fairy realm Shakespeare created was quite different 
from any that had preceded it — a new creation in the 
world of imagination. His way of building it gave it con- 
sistency, poetry, beauty, and conscious life. He shaped its 
work, its pleasures, its manners, its poetic mode of speech, 
its love-affairs, its court, its ritual, and its unmorality. 
All the fairydom of the next three centuries derives from 
it. But its image has now degenerated. What our poetry 
and our child's books give us of fairyland has neither the 
dignity nor the lovely speech nor the reality of Shake- 
speare's dream. As there was nothing like it before him, 
so there has been nothing so good after him. 

Yet, new-shaped as it was, it was made out of existing 
materials ; partly out of the Arthurian stories, out of the 
fairies of the lake and the wood who loved, like Titania, 
mortal heroes, and who could wear the same stature and 
shape as those they loved ; and partly out of the English 
folk-traditions, often rude and unpoetic, concerning elves 
and dwarfs and a host of little people, who helped or 
hindered the agriculturist and who were honoured by a 
blunt, primeval ritual which took different forms among 
different peoples. Robin Goodfellow, whom Shakespeare 
developed into Puck, belongs to this folk-tradition, and 
he has attained in the play a higher life and powers. 

These rustic traditions were the only kind of fairy belief 
which had a popular existence in England when Shake- 
speare wrote. The Elf-land of Romance was far behind 
his time. Even Chaucer, writing two hundred years 



22 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

before him, relegates the faerie of England back to 
Arthur's time — 

In the olde daies of the King Arthoure, 
Of which that Bretons speken grete honoure, 
Al was this land fulfild of fayerye ; 
The elf-queen with hyr jolly companye 
Danced ful oft in many a greene mede. 

Those days had passed away for Chaucer, to his regret. 
In Malory's book they were, however, revived for Shake- 
speare. It is probable also that he had read Huon de 
Bordeaux. He took then the fairydom of Arthurian 
story, which from Celtic had become romantic, and he 
took also the elf-folklore which still lives in rustic Eng- 
land, and made out of both these sources a fairyland of 
his own. Curious survivals from them appear in single 
lines, in long passages, and in certain qualities which jut 
forth, as it were, in Oberon, Titania, and Puck. 

1. The description of Puck and his tricks (all belonging 
to the life of the farm), both by himself and by the fairy 
who talks with Puck at the beginning of the second act, 
is a remnant of the rude folklore of the elves of England. 
It does not belong to the Arthurian sources. But when 
Puck is developed by Shakespeare into the swift servant 
of Oberon, he is, though he retains his elvish mischief, 
lifted on to the romantic plane. He is a spirit between 
both the traditions — un esprit panache. 1 

2. Oberon and Titania are linked to the elemental forces 
of nature. Their lives, their very temper, are echoed in 
the doings of the sun and moon, of the seasons, of the 
weather. When these two are in harmony, all is well 

1 I believe Puck to be a remnant, unknowingly wrought up by 
Shakespeare, of the tradition of the infant carried off by the fairies 
who, living with them, gains many of their powers, but is always 
tricksy, half human, half fairy, and a servant to the fairy Queen or 
King. But Puck also refers back to the agricultural tradition. All his 
tricks are done to the farm-dwellers ; he knows the native proverbs, 
and they are those of English country life (Act HI. Sc. ii.). 



MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM 23 

with field and furrow, with agricultural humanity. When 
they quarrel, all goes wrong. That noble piece of poetry 
in which Titania traces the ruined year to her quarrel 
with Oberon proves this by its conclusion — 

And this same progeny of evil comes 
From our debate, from our dissension ; 
We are their parents and original. 

This conception has no source that I am aware of in the 
Arthurian romances. It harks back to an earlier world, 
to those gods and goddesses of the ancient Teutonic and 
Celtic mythology who were the deities of agriculture, to 
whom the farmer prayed, who made the weather accord- 
ing to their pleasure or their anger with their worshippers; 
and who, when Christianity destroyed their rule, con- 
tinued as the ' fairy host ' in Ireland under forms of high 
imagination ; and in England as the elves and dwarfs and 
tricksy sprites, like Robin Goodfellow, under forms made 
by rustic and unpoetic superstition. Yet, in whatever 
shape we find them, they have to do, in one part or 
another of their life, with the work of the field and the 
farm, with the natural forces which promote or injure 
agriculture. 

The poetry of that ancient life was, no one can tell 
how, seized on and restored by our Magician in Oberon 
and Titania, who have the qualities of divine nature- 
beings, but on a lower level than they were before 
Christianity. They are invisible ; they come and go as 
swiftly as thought. They still command the elements. 
They bless or ban the doings of the tillers of the ground, 
help or injure them. And it is characteristic of their 
origin that they consecrate the marriage-bed of Theseus 
with the dew of the field. 

3. Oberon and Titania have a sympathy with, and give 
protection to, heroic personages, both male and female. 
They give more than protection ; they give love. 



24 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

Titania's relations to Theseus, and Oberon's to Hippolyta, 
are one of the survivals I have mentioned. These love- 
affairs between the immortal and the mortal go back 
for their origin not only to the Arthurian cycle of 
romance, but further still, to the Irish mythic stories, 
to Cuchullainn, Oisin, and the rest. The relations be- 
tween men and the fairies had, in the Arthur tales and 
the heroic Irish legends, the same unmorality which pre- 
vails in the lives of Shakespeare's Oberon and Titania. 
He did not invent it ; he derived it. 

4. In connection with this, it is plain that Oberon and 
Titania could, like the romantic fairies and the Irish 
goddesses, assume the shape and stature of mortal men 
and women. Some say that Shakespeare's fairies are ex- 
ceedingly small. And many of Titania's attendants are. 
They creep, for example, into acorn cups, and hang the 
dewdrops on the cowslip's ear. But the higher creatures, 
like the King and Queen, can be, we must infer, as tall, 
when they pleased, as the men and women they were in 
love with. Even Puck can assume any shape he pleases, 
and we may be sure that when Oberon played as Corin 
with amorous Phyllida, and when Titania sat with her 
Indian ' votaress of my order ' all the day to watch the 
ships go by, they were more than an inch in height. 
Even Mustard, Pease-Blossom, and the rest, when they 
talked with Bottom, could not have been, for the moment, 
exceedingly small. This power of changing shape, and of 
being small and great at pleasure, is shared in by Ariel. 1 

These and other elements were Shakespeare's materials. 
The combination of them into the lovely form of a new 
world of Faerie was the magical work of his genius. 
Moreover, he placed these rough jewels of thought in 

1 Those who wish to read more on these matters would do well to get 
Mr. Alfred Nutt's admirable little book on the Fairy Mythology of 
Shakespeare,, to which I am much indebted, 



MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM 25 

the loveliest setting possible — in poetry not one word of 
which is out of harmony with the fairy atmosphere he has 
created. He is never more gracious, more consistent in 
poetry than on the lips of Oberon. 

When Oberon brings into his talk 'Cupid all-armed,' 
whom only he could see, and the mermaid on the 
dolphin's back whose music drew the stars from the sky, 
we feel no jar of unbelief, we understand that his common 
speech is poetry. Nor does Titania fail in this. Her talk 
has the same exquisiteness ; as if the flowers themselves 
were speaking. What they say is not the highest poetry, 
not of the depths of passion or thought. That great 
matter belongs to man. But it is of a light, airy loveli- 
ness, like the feelings and images which drift in and out 
of a happy child. And this is Shakespeare's underived 
creation. On the lips of Oberon and Titania, it is 
chiefly concerned with beautiful things in nature, with 
flowers and birds and wild fruits of the wood, with the 
sea and the mountains, the moonlight and the morning. 
The little fairies, their attendants, belong also to what 
is gracious and gentle in the woods. They take care of 
the flowers, adorn them with the pearls of the dew, are 
the enemies of all gloomy and ugly things, drive them 
from Titania's bed, and sing to her as she sleeps. They 
are the spirits which dwell in beautiful things, such 
spirits as Shelley placed in the crystalline spheres that 
the sun drew upwards from the stream. This invention 
is also of Shakespeare alone. 

Again, he made their life to belong to the moon. It is 
only in her light that they waken to dance and sing and 
rejoice. It is only at night that they are happy, and able 
for their pretty works. This also is Shakespeare's device. 
But Oberon and Titania are free, or nearly free, from this 
limitation. When they assume a mortal shape, they share 
in the day. This, however, is but seldom. Their nature is 



26 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

to 'follow darkness like a dream.' They are in the shadow 
world. Yet even there the King has power to play with 
the outskirts of the dawn. 

I with the morning's love have oft made sport ; 
And, like a forester, the groves may tread, 
Even till the eastern gate, all fiery-red, 
Opening on Neptune with fair blessed beams, 
Turns into yellow gold his salt green streams. 

All this is of Shakespeare's own imagination. And it is, 
I repeat, a wonder of imaginative power that, through- 
out this fairyland, he should keep his elfin atmosphere 
quite untouched by humanity. 

Two more things may be said. First, Oberon and 
Titania are quite the King and Queen. Shakespeare had 
a full respect for dignities, and his great people always 
speak with dignity and good manners. It is not different 
in the fairy world. Tennyson's treatment of Oberon and 
Titania would have jarred Shakespeare to the bone, 
and is sufficient to prove how much the Shakespearean 
ideal of Elf-land has degenerated. There is no rude 
scolding in the quarrel of the King and Queen, nothing 
undignified. Even when Titania is in love with Bottom, 
she never loses her greatness or her grace in speech. 

T am a spirit of no common rate ; 

The summer still doth tend upon my state. 

Oberon does not get his way with her by violence or 
by authority, but by superior knowledge. He and she 
are equal in rank and honour. And when he sees her, 
by his trick, enamoured of an ass, he is sorry for her. 
He has upbraided her ; she — her pride forgotten through 
his magic — has answered him with patience and given 
up the cause of their quarrel. Pity awakens in him ; 
he releases her with loving words — 

Now, my Titania ; wake you, my sweet Queen, 



MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM 27 

and Titania instantly gives back his love ; 

My Oberon, what visions have I seen ! 

This is all in the high courtly strain. 

Secondly, in this shadow world, one human thing per- 
sists. It is the difference of sex. Oberon is altogether 
the man, Titania the woman. It is this element in them 
which gives them their sympathy with us, with the lovers, 
with the marriage of Theseus. And it is vividly present 
in all their words and ways. This sex-difference was vital 
in Shakespeare's work. No man ever said or did anything 
womanly in the plays ; no woman in them ever spoke or 
acted like a man. When Rosalind, Portia, Imogen assume 
the man, there is a subtle, conscious difference in all they 
say from that which a man would say, which keeps them 
woman ; a more delicate style in phrase and thought and 
play, an atmosphere of charm. To give this impression 
when boys acted the parts must have been difficult, but 
great genius rejoices in difficulty, or does not see it. The 
modern tendency towards the effacement of sex-difference 
never appears in Shakespeare. That the difference is 
always present is at the root of half the power he has 
over humanity. And here, even in the world of dream, 
it is as prominent in Titania and Oberon as it is in 
Beatrice and Benedick, in Desdemona and Othello, in 
every man and woman in the plays. 

Of all the fantastic events of the dream not one is so 
fantastic as the introduction into it of Bottom, the rude 
mechanical, with an ass's head; and of his love-affair 
with Titania. Titania is still Titania, even when she is 
enamoured of this monster. Her speech is always poetry, 
her flower-like life is still mingled with the flowers. She 
lives in her love without a thought of human morality ; 
and when it is over, she instantly forgets it as if it had 



28 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

never been; makes no excuse for it, and takes up her life 
with Oberon immediately. This is quite in character 
with the unmorality of the Nature-Fays of the Arthurian 
Romance, and of the Irish goddesses. Her unconscious- 
ness, under the spell, of her folly is charming, yet pitiful ; 
and she has even the melancholy and the absorption of 
human love. Oberon paints her as wandering alone in 
the wood seeking for flowers to deck her love, and as 
forgetting everything else. Her attendant fairies never 
question her will, nor seem surprised at her vagary — and 
that too is most fantastically fantastic. Yet, audacious 
as it is, Shakespeare has made it seem almost natural. 

Bottom takes it all quite naturally. In a moment he has 
been swept into the fairy world, and is loved by its Queen. 
He does not think he is in a dream till he gets out of it. 
The humorous vanity of the man not only supports 
him, but enables him to throw himself eagerly into the 
situation. He talks to the fairies as if he were one of them- 
selves, and uses their service according to their names. 
So he would have talked to Quince and Snug, Flute and 
Starveling. In the dream he keeps his previous vanity ; 
he has always been the king of his little world; he is 
still the same king in fairyland. But it is a pleasant 
vanity, and is founded on a real superiority. All his 
fellows own his greatness. No one objects when he says 
he can act Hercules if necessary, or take the part of 
Thisbe ; and when he is lost, the play is given up. He 
has the activity of pure vanity, does all he believes he can 
do, and in every difficulty sets to work at once. When he 
recovers from the dream, he puts it aside in a moment for 
action. His fellows want to know where he has been. 
But he will not tell them now. 

Not a word of me. All that I will tell you is that the Duke hath 
dined. G-et your apparel together, good strings to your beards, new 
ribbons to your pumps ; meet presently at the palace ; every man look 



MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM 29 

over his part ; for the short and long is, our play is preferred. . . . No 
more words : away ! go ; away. 

Even in the presence of the Duke his pushing nature 
makes him at ease. He is so fond of explaining everything 
to the lower intellects of the court, of setting every one 
right, that he interrupts the play for that purpose. He 
corrects Theseus and puts Demetrius down. Quite proud, 
at the end, of the success of his play, he offers Theseus 
an Epilogue or a Bergomask ! Yet he has the artist's 
belief in what he does, and great pleasure in it. There- 
fore, absurd as he is, Theseus and Hippolyta are quite 
moved by his acting — 

The. This passion and the death of a dear friend, would go near to 

make a man look sad. 
Hip. Beshrew my heart, but I pity the man. 

When his fellows fly from him, after his ' translation,' 

this same self-confidence sets him at ease with himself, 

and he begins to sing that they may hear he is not afraid. 

He is equally at ease in fairyland. Yet, he never seems 

to realise Titania. Had he for a moment confessed love 

to her, he would have lowered her in our eyes. We might 

have thought real what was due to magic. Nor does he 

believe it when he wakes. The dream, lingering with 

him for a moment, amazes him, and confuses his tongue. 

Methought I was — there is no man can tell what. The eye of man 
hath not heard, the ear of man hath not seen, man's hand is not able to 
taste, his tongue to conceive, nor his heart to report, what my dream was. 

Then he becomes fully awake. 

I will get Peter Quince to write a ballad of this dream ; it shall be 
called Bottom's Dream, because it has no bottom. 

He is back almost at once in his plain, honest life. 

It is different with the lovers. They are naturally at 
home in the world of imagination. Their dream has been 
so vivid that for a long time it seems reality — that well- 
known result of dreaming. Theseus tells them all is right 



30 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

with them. They have begun to realise this, yet dream- 
land lingers with them. There is a world of meaning in 
their words. 

Dem. These things seem small and undistinguishable, 
Like far-off mountains turned into clouds. 

Her. Methinks I see these things with parted eye 
When everything seems double. 

Hel. So methinks : 

And I have found Demetrius, like a jewel, 
Mine own, and not mine own. 

Dem. Are you sure 

That we are awake ? It seems to me 
That yet we sleep, we dream. Do you not think 
The Duke was here, and bid us follow him ? 

Her. Yea, and my father ? 

Hel. And Hippolyta. 

Dem. Why, then, we are awake. 

The Dream is over. Hippolyta half believes it. Theseus 
puts it down to imagination. But the lovers know it has 
brought the dreams of their lives into reality. 

Shakespeare himself does not disdain his Dream, nor 
think it only fancy. A creator loves the world he makes, 
and would assert its reality. And, indeed, while a great 
part of the events of the time when Shakespeare lived 
has perished from memory as unsubstantial, this creation 
of his has taken to itself immortal substance. The fairy- 
land he made lives still, not only in the play, but in its 
children — in a thousand books and poems, in pictures and 
in music. Nor did Shakespeare write as if he thought 
his dream altogether a dream. He has made it do actual 
work, as if it were not all compact of shadow. It is 
dreamland that has made the lovers finally happy, got 
round the laws of Athens, put the tyrannic and greedy 
father in the wrong, settled Theseus into the promoter of 
true love, reversed the cruel tricks of Cupid all-armed, and 
made every one at ease. Oberon, the King of shadows, 
has done it. 

And I am not sure that in the whole drift of the play 



MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM 31 

there is not a half-ironical suggestion of Shakespeare's, a 
transient imagination of his youth — that this life of ours 
is but a vision, out of which we are to wake at last ; out 
of the disturbed, inconsequent, confused, grotesque con- 
dition of which we may pass into the ordered reality. If 
so, he would hint in this early play what momentarily 
engaged his thought when he said with Prospero — 

AVe are such stuff 
As dreams are made on, and our little life 
Is rounded with a sleep. 

The lovers rejoice that they have awaked from a dream 
into reality ; but they do not know, as Shiva would have 
said, that it was but a dream within a dream, and that 
they are still asleep. 

The fine poetry of this play is of a twofold character. It 
might be divided, without being too fantastical, into 
poetry of the daylight and of the moonlight. There is a 
delicate spirit, a shimmer of fancy and elfin thought, 
without any human feeling, in the music and the charm 
of the poetry Shakespeare puts into the speech of the 
fairies which seems made of the silver of moonlight 
and to bring with it the shadows of moonlight. The 
Indian mythology tells that moonstones in the rays of 
the moon distil a nectar, with the scent of camphor, which 
is composed of the substance of the moon and is the 
essence of its light. Such a moonstone is the fairy poetry 
of this play. It drops nectar. 

Mingled with it, there is another spirit, less delicate, less 
fantastical, nearer to our thought — the spirit of the wood- 
land, of the life in trees and flowers and the wild fruits 
of the earth, and of their beautiful indwellers. There 
is a weightier note in this, a touch as it were of humanity, 
which gives some substance to the moonlight spirit in the 
verse. In both, however, the ripple and melody of the 



32 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

poetry are like the ripple and melody of nature, the move- 
ment of the waves of the moon's light, the rustling of the 
night-wind in the trees and grass. It is not fantastical 
to believe that Shakespeare felt this harmony of his 
fairy -poetry with the moonlight and the woodland. 
Only once in this play does the fairy-poetry lose these 
notes. It is when Titania describes the country desolated 
by rain and storm, — the result of her quarrel with Oberon. 
She does not care much for the miseries of men, but she 
thinks of them, and this thought of hers gives substance 
to the poetry of her description. A closer humanity 
belongs to the delightful verse of Puck and Oberon and 
Titania when, with their train, they fill the house of 
Theseus and bless the marriage-bed. A domestic charm 
lives from line to line, and goes with the fairy tribe from 
one shadowy room to another. 

Through the house give glimmering light 
By the dead and drowsy fire ; 

Quite otherwise is the poetry of the daylight, of the 
men and women who are not in the dream. It has weight 
of thought and feeling, and is full of the matter of human 
life. The first dialogue of Theseus and Hippolyta is 
marked by an imaginative passion which elsewhere does 
not appear in their words. It gathers round the moon, 
and the spirit of the moon has touched it. The rest of 
the beautiful things they say beautifully is full of that 
fresh good sense and that morning brightness which, as 
in Milton, so in Shakespeare, have so much to do with 
noble poetry. The speech of Theseus concerning the wel- 
come given to kings by simple folk, his famous picture of 
the antique fables poets, lovers, and madmen make, are 
touched with that grave matter of thought and human 
experience without which poetry is an empty shell, full 
only of sweet sound. As to the rival description by 



MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM 33 

Theseus and Hippolyta, when in the dawn from the 
mountain-top they watch the hunt, the very breath of 
the fresh morning sings and cheers in every word 
of it. 

The lovers too have their own poetry. A different 
note fills it, the note of youthful, inexperienced love, in 
its joy and its trouble, full of fast-changing fancies, 
none of them deep or penetrating. Even in the mad- 
nesses of the dream their thoughts live only on the 
surface of things. Passion's touch on the four lovers is 
slight, claps them on their shoulder, but does not close 
round their heart. Nature, who, when love is profound, 
disappears from the lover's eyes, is used by these lovers 
to illustrate and enhance their love. Helena, being un- 
happy, is she in whose mouth Shakespeare places the 
finest love-poetry. Her sorrow adds substance to her 
fancy. It is she who cries in words which sing themselves 

happy fair ! 
Your eyes are lode-stars ! and your tongue's sweet air 
More tuneable than lark to shepherd's ear, 
When wheat is green, when hawthorn buds appear. 

It is she who describes the school-days' friendship, the 
childhood innocence of herself and Hermia, in a passage 
which, in spite of its elaborate beauty, has always seemed 
to me a little out of tune with the confusion and the 
wildness of the Dream in which she is then involved. 
It brings us too much into reality. But this impertinent 
reproach to Shakespeare is perhaps undeserved. Helena 
is far the most tormented of the four lovers, and the 
height of her misery would, in Shakespeare's mind, 
lift her above the magic of the dream into her natural 
self. 

Poetry moves then through three separate worlds in 
this play, and moves in all with ease. But its wonders of 
creation are most unique, most of an unknown, unex- 
c 



34 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

perienced beauty, in the world where Oberon bids Puck 
remember how once in the moonlight he 

sat upon a promontory 
And heard a mermaid on a dolphin's back 
Uttering such dulcet and harmonious breath, 
That the rude sea grew civil at her song, 
And certain stars shot madly from their spheres 
To hear the sea-maid's music. 

All the magic into which Keats once entered is in the 
words and in their melody. 



II 

EOMEO AND JULIET 

Goethe, when Director of the Theatre at Weimar, put 
Romeo and Juliet upon the stage. He omitted nearly 
the whole of the first act, and made the play begin 
with the mask and dance at the house of Capulet — 
that is, he left out the quarrel in the street, initiated by 
the servants; the intervention of the Prince between 
the two great houses at feud ; the love-pains of Romeo 
for Rosaline and the sketch of his character contained 
in them, before he is made a man ; the sketch of Juliet 
before Love had made her woman, which, given by her 
mother and the Nurse, is also touched in by Juliet her- 
self; the representation of the young bloods of Verona, 
overflowing with youthful sap and wit, in which Romeo, 
Mercutio, and Benvolio are contrasted and isolated into 
individual characters. 

To leave out all this preparation, these studies for the 
full picture, this slow growth of the tragic storm before 
the Event suddenly arises which contains, inevitably, the 
conclusion, is to understand neither Shakespeare nor 
dramatic art. Over this long preparation broods the 
long-suffering Justice who punishes quarrels which injure 
the state ; and Shakespeare meant us to understand this. 
How he meant it I shall afterwards try to explain. It is 
enough to say now that he suggests it in the Prologue, 
where he states the' ground, the fatal working, and the 
conclusion of this his earliest tragedy. 

In the first four scenes, so long and careful is his 



36 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

preparation, all the elements of a coming doom are con- 
tained and shaped — the ancient feud, deepening in 
hatred from generation to generation, the fiery Youth-in- 
arms of whom Tybalt is the concentration; the intense 
desire of loving in Romeo, which thinks it has found its 
true goal in Rosaline but has not, and which, therefore, 
leaps into it when it is found in Juliet ; the innocence of 
Juliet whom Love has never touched, but who is all 
trembling for his coming ; the statesman's anger of the 
Prince with the quarrel of the houses ; and finally, the 
boredom of the people, whose quiet is disturbed, with 
the continual interruption of their business by the 
rioters — 

Clubs, bills, and partizans ! Strike ! beat them down ! 
Down with the Capulets, down with the Montagues ! 

a cry which seems to ring through the whole play. It is 
impossible this should continue. Justice will settle it, or 
the common judgment of mankind will clear the way. 

The quarrel of the houses is the cause of the tragedy, 
and Shakespeare develops it immediately. It begins with 
the servants in the street ; it swells into a roar when the 
masters join in, when Tybalt adds to it his violent fury, 
when the citizens push in — till we see the whole street in 
multitudinous turmoil, and the old men as hot as the 
young ; 

Cap. My sword, I say ! Old Montague is come, 

And flourishes his blade in spite of me. 
Mon. Thou villain Capulet ! Hold me not, let me go. 

Then, when the Prince enters, his stern blame of both 
parties fixes into clear form the main theme of the play. 
He collects together, in his indignant reproaches, the 
evils of the feud and the certainty of its punishment. 
We are again forced to feel that the over-ruling Justice 
which develops states will intervene. 

This scene is an admirable piece of history. It brings 



ROMEO AND JULIET 37 

before us in a moment the hot passion of a mediaeval town 
where the nobles are at feud. A servant bites his thumb 
at the servant of another house, and in five minutes the 
streets are streaming with blood. It was much the same 
in Italy when Shakespeare wrote ; nor was such disturb- 
ance impossible in London, though Elizabeth had welded 
the nobles together into a common patriotism in which 
individual quarrels were reduced. In Edinburgh, where 
the clan system was stronger, the streets leaped in an 
instant into strife. It is worth while to read, as a parallel 
to this scene in Shakespeare, the vivid sketch Scott gives 
in The Abbot of the Canongate rushing instantly into 
crowded rage when the chiefs and retainers of the Seton 
meet with those of the Leslies on the crown of the 
causeway. 

With what intensity of life both these descriptions 
by Scott and Shakespeare are infused ! The giving of life 
was their pre-eminent power. Other dramatists had 
worked the story before Shakespeare, but the men and 
women were lifeless dolls. He took the crude, common- 
place material, placed its elements in the Crucible of his 
genius, and when the mixture boiled above the fire of 
his passion a host of living creatures, each distinct, 
loving, fighting, talking, in joy and sorrow, poured 
forth, brimming over with thought, passion, and action, 
and mingled together to weave the tragic story. It 
was much to animate the chief personages of the tale, 
Romeo and Juliet, till they are for ever young, for ever 
loving; it was more perhaps, for it was of a greater 
difficulty, to animate with a quick-eyed life and character 
the minor personages of the play. The Nurse and 
Mercutio are nothing in the original tale. Here they 
become living representatives each of a separate class. 
As vivid and as distinctive a life is given to the rest, down 
to the very servants. None resembles the other. All 



38 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

have their own ways, their own character, their own 
results. ' Let there be life,' said Shakespeare, and there 
is life. 

And the life in them all is the life of youth, even in 
the old men. Old Capulet is as hot-headed as Tybalt, 
so is old Montague. The Nurse lives over her youth in 
luscious memory. The Friar has a gentle sympathy with 
young love, tastes with a gusto his youth in the love of 
Romeo and Juliet. The young men flash into merri- 
ment and wit and fighting with equal joy and fire. 
Even Benvolio's quiet is kindled into flame at a touch. 
Mercutio overflows with the sap of youth. There is not 
a leaf on the tree of his life which is not thrilling with it. 
The first fancy of Romeo for Rosaline, even though it is 
not a deep but a superficial love because it is not 
returned, is full of the solitudes, the fantasies, the self- 
brooding and thinking, the imaginative dreams of youth 
in love with love, of the pranks a lover's intellect plays 
with words in order to illustrate his love — rather than 
with Rosaline. Juliet is a child with a will, but subdued 
to her mother's hand, till the fated hour comes. Amid 
all this turmoil of youth, it is pleasant to touch her un- 
conscious childhood. It soon departs, and then she is 
the incarnation of first love, knowing in one supreme 
moment all that love commands. 

When the hour comes to Romeo and her, the swift 
' precipitancy ' of youthful ardour seizes them, and never 
lets them go. The sight of one another across the room is 
enough. The same night Romeo climbs the orchard wall, 
speaks with Juliet, and plans their marriage. The next 
morning they are married. The morning after they part 
for ever. It is cruel, but even Justice herself seems to 
have all the impetuosity of youth, and only allows her 
victims one night of love. Shakespeare has shaken off 
all the delays of the original story. In it, weeks pass 



ROMEO AND JULIET 39 

before the lovers meet. But here, youth scorns delay; 
' O, let us hence ; ' says Romeo, ' I stand on sudden haste.' 
Juliet is not less wild with youth's impetuous passion. 
She will have her marriage in a moment — 

The clock struck nine when I did send the nurse ; 

In half an hour she promis'd to return. 

Perchance she cannot meet him : that 's not so. 

O ! she is lame : lore's heralds should be thoughts, 

Which ten times faster glide than the sun's beams, 

Driving back shadows over lowering hills : 

Therefore do nimble-pinion'd doves draw Love, 

And therefore hath the wind-swift Cupid wings. 

Now is the sun upon the highmost hill 

Of this day's journey, and from nine to twelve 

Is three long hours, yet she is not come. 

Had she affections, and warm youthful blood, 

She 'd be as swift in motion as a ball ; 

My words would bandy her to my sweet love, 

And his to me : 

But old folks, many feign as they were dead ; 

Unwieldy, slow, heavy and pale as lead. 

God ! she comes. honey nurse ! what news 1 

Hast thou met with him ? Send thy man away. 

' Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds,' she cries when 
she waits for Romeo. The ardour of her youth and love 
is living in the words. 

When they threaten to marry her to Paris, she will die 
on the moment, as when Romeo hears of her death he 
resolves to die instantly. Death is a slight thing to youth 
when the wine of life is drawn ; and the lovers welcome 
its peace. The Friar, being old, is cautious. ' Too quick 
is youthful blood.' ' Wisely and slow,' he cries, ' they 
stumble who run fast.' ' These violent delights have 
violent ends.' ' Love moderately, long love doth so.' 
Even Juliet herself, for once, in the midst of her hurrying 
passion, pauses a moment The black wing of Destiny 
seems to touch her coldly — 

I have no joy of this contract to-night : 
It is too rash, too unadvis'd, too sudden ; 



40 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

Too like the lightning, which doth cease to be 
Ere one can say, it lightens. 1 

The play races, drawn by the steeds of youth. It even 
seems, I have said, as if Justice herself were in a hurry to 
accomplish her ends. There is an impression on the 
reader that she is driving with hastening lash all the 
characters on to the catastrophe. 

In contrast with this speed, there is, at the beginning 
of the play, the slow dreaming of Romeo over his love 
for Rosaline. Had he been truly in love he had long 
since brought his love to a point. He is rapid enough 
when he is vitally touched; but now he is as quiet as 
a dove, brooding, cooing to himself, taking no action. 
Benvolio scoffs at him for this, lectures him, sketches him 
wandering through the grove of sycamore, flying from his 
friends into the covert of the wood. His father sketches 
him shut up all day with the windows closed against the 
sun; secret and close, 'his own affections' counsellor.' 
He loves his own phantom of love, not Rosaline; sick 
of himself, not sick of love; enthralled within his own 
personality, though, to himself, he seems to have lost it ; 

Tut, I have lost myself ; I am not here ; 
This is not Romeo, he 's some other where. 

He amuses himself, as no true lover does, with intellectual, 
not passionate, fancies concerning love. He paints it 
in euphuistic tricks of words — it is 'heavy lightness, 
serious vanity, feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, 
sick health ! Still- waking sleep, that is not what it is ! ' 
This is dreaming of love, not loving, and the proof is 
he does not care for anything. The true lover cares for 

1 Compare Lysander's illustration in Midsummer Night's Dream — 

Brief as the lightning in the oollied night 
That, in a spleen, unfolds both heaven and earth, 
And ere a man hath power to say, ' Behold ! ' 
The jaws of darkness do devour it up. 
So quick bright things come to confusion. 



ROMEO AND JULIET 41 

everything. The only thing which interests Romeo now 
is himself, himself whom he pities, caresses, nurses, whose 
misery is his sweetness. 

Not a trace, not a shred of this is left, when the true 
thing dawns, then blazes like the noonday sun; and 
the contrast, vividly conceived, splendidly executed, was 
meant by the artist. This supreme love comes like a 
divine revelation, shaking his estate of man to its centre, 
destroying the dreamer, establishing the man of action, 
replacing the fanciful by the actual man. He feels it 
before it comes; the deep shadow its brightness throws 
falls upon him ; he hears in it the wild call of Destiny ; 
it is one of Shakespeare's mystic passages. Before he 
enters Capulet's house, just before he sees Juliet, he 
stays in the street and names his fear. 

I fear, too early ; for my mind misgives 
Some consequence yet hanging in the stars 
Shall bitterly begin his fearful date 
With this night's revels, and expire the term 
Of a despised life closed in my breast 
By some vile forfeit of untimely death. 
But he, that hath the steerage of my course 
Direct my sail ! On, lusty gentlemen. 

This is the dreadful gate by which he enters the 
paradise of love. Shakespeare never lets us forget the 
doom which overhangs the play. 

Along with this contrast between the delays of fanciful 
and the swiftness of real love, there is also the contrast 
of the unthinking gaiety, the wild youth of Tybalt and 
Romeo's companions, with the dark fates which follow 
the star-crossed love of Romeo and Juliet. It is their 
love which slays Mercutio first, then Tybalt, and then 
the County Paris; which turns Benvolio's joyousness 
into sorrow, and strips old Capulet of all his youth-in- 
age. But before we trace their fates, it were well to touch 



42 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

the characters of these youths whose brightness throws 
into relief the early glooms of Romeo. 

Benvolio is his elose friend ; of a steady, still character, 
equally ready to win his friend out of his useless life by 
gentle reproof, and to quiet down the riots in the street ; 
the type of the temperate man who lives long, and who 
is of use at all periods of history. The sketch Mercutio 
makes of him as one who is ready to quarrel for anything 
is plainly a mocking of his quiet and reconciling temper. 
He has no genius, little fancy, and is cut out for a states- 
man. Nor is he specially Italian. I am sure Shakespeare 
met this type among the young men of the court of 
Elizabeth, men who would grow into statesmen like 
Cecil. 

Opposed to him in character, but his friend, is Mercutio ; 
wit's scintillating star, thrilling with life to his finger- 
tips, not caring for women save as the toys of an hour, 
ready to tackle, on the instant, any woman, young or old ; 
brave, audacious, going swiftly to his point, keeping no 
thought within him but flinging it at once into speech ; 
' he will speak more in a minute than he will stand to in 
a month ' ; quick in choler, ready to attempt the moon 
and pull the sun down, loose of speech, mocking old 
and young out of the racing of his blood — the gay ruffler 
of Italy, such as Shakespeare often met in London, such 
as many of the Italian novels enclose and paint. 

But he is more than that. He has wit. "Whatever he 
touches he finds ten remote analogies for it; his way- 
ward thinking plays with every unimportant matter, as 
a cat with a mouse, till the matter seem important. Nor 
is his wit unmanly, like that of the dainty courtiers of 
the day who conned their quips and cranks out of books, 
and whose most absurd type is Osric in Hamlet. It is, 
on the contrary, all his own, the fresh coinage of his brain. 
It is kindly too ; while he mocks at Romeo's love he does 



ROMEO AND JULIET 43 

not despise him. Those he despises are the fools and 

the blusterers, like Tybalt — 

The pox of such antick, lisping, affecting fantasticoes, these new 
tuners of accents ! . . . these strange flies, these fashion-mongers, these 
pardonnez mois, who stand so much on the new form that they cannot 
sit at ease on the old bench. 

Mercutio scorns these water-flies. He has added the 
sturdy sense of the Englishman to the rippling gaiety 
of the Italian. More than wit belongs to him. There is 
a touch of genius in his soul, and a single grain of that 
rarity makes its possessor loveable. Even in the midst of 
Romeo's new passion he loves Mercutio. Benvolio weeps 
for him — 

That gallant spirit hath aspir'd the clouds. 
Romeo avenges him, swept away by grief to forget for 
an instant his love of Juliet. 

With this touch of genius is imagination, or rather 

fancy almost becoming imagination. Of that uncommon 

web of gossamer the well-known description of Queen 

Mab is an enchanting example. It is not quite of 

imagination all compact. It flits with amazing grace 

and lightness over the surface of the thing described; 

it does not penetrate it. As poetry, it is of the same 

quality and kind, but not so beautiful, as the speech of 

Oberon and Titania; delightful, graceful, delicate, but 

not of any depth either of thought or passion ; that is to 

say, it is exactly right as it is, and where it is. But his 

next speech slips into the earnestness and the beauty of 

imagination ; now into it, now into fancy only — on the 

borderland of these two powers — 

True, I talk of dreams, 
Which are the children of an idle brain, 
Begot of nothing but vain fantasy ; 
Which is as thin of substance as the air, 
And more inconstant than the wind, who woos 
Even now the frozen bosom of the north, 
And, being anger'd, puffs away from thence, 
Turning his face to the dew-dropping south. 



44 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

It is said that Mercutio was too brilliant for Shake- 
speare to support at the same level throughout the whole 
play ; and that, had he not been slain, Shakespeare would 
have had otherwise to get rid of him. It would be 
hard to agree with that. Shakespeare's wit always 
answers his call through the whole range of his plays. 
It ebbs and flows, but when it ebbs it is because he has 
felt that it should not be too brilliant, not because he 
was not able to make it brilliant. He carried Falstaff 
through three long plays, and Falstaff is wittier than 
Mercutio. Moreover, the wit of Mercutio is that of the 
time at which he lived, mostly play with words and with 
far-fetched analogies; and every Oxford and Cambridge 
scholar, and every courtier, and every literary man 
exercised himself in it. In some it was richly, in 
others poorly phrased, but it was common; and when- 
ever it is a habit in society it becomes as easy to 
produce wit of word-play as it is difficult to produce 
when it is not the habit. It is tiresome talk to us; it 
seemed brilliant then. These puns, fantastic turns of 
phrase, and fancy-pictures, are to us what they were 
to Romeo — 'talk of nothing.' Yet Romeo himself in- 
dulged in them before he loved Juliet. His Euphuism 
then suited his fancy -love for Rosaline; but when the 
very fire of the god arrived it burned up all this play 
with words. It has been blamed by critics, and Shake- 
speare's art, on account of it, called in question. He 
did not keep it long. When his genius grew out of 
sketching the particular in man to drawing carefully 
the universal, he left it by; but when he was a young 
artist, it was quite natural to represent the common 
talk of the day, and those who listened to it caught 
up every point with pleasure. In Mercutio, it grew 
out of the very nature of the man. Even when he 
comes to die — and his death is touched with a master- 



ROMEO AND JULIET 45 

hand — lie does not lose his wit. He still plays with 
words ; 

No, 'tis not so deep as a well, nor so wide as a church-door ; but 'tis 
enough, 'twill serve ; ask for me to-morrow, and you shall find me a 
grave man. 

In vain, in vain ! The pathetic weakness of death grows 
on him ; his wit dies in bitter regret for lost joy, in anger 
with fate. Yet that mounting spirit is brave to the last ; 

Help me into some house, Benvolio, 
Or I shall faint. A plague o' both your houses ! 
They have made worms' meat of me. I have it, 
And soundly too : — your houses ! 

See how Shakespeare brings home on the lips of the 
first victim of Justice, working retribution for the guilt 
of the feud, the main motive of the tragedy. 

Tybalt — to continue this sketch of the minor characters 
— is not, though his ill- temper makes him seem so, a 
swashbuckler, or a bully. He is the quick-offended duel- 
list of the day, one of those whom the French court called 
the raffines ; hot to challenge a smile, a motion of the 
hand, but a gentleman quite fit to rank with Benvolio and 
Mercutio. Like the rest, he is as ready to die as to live. 
Unlike Benvolio, who is good-temper personified ; unlike 
Romeo, who is quiet by nature; unlike Mercutio, who is 
good-humoured, but touchy on the point of honour; 
Tybalt is of a natural bad temper, quarrelsome, liable to 
fits of fury. When Capulet, who is as hot as he, bids him 
lay by his rage at Romeo's appearance in his house, and 
forces peace upon him, his body trembles ; 

Patience perforce with wilful choler meeting 
Makes my flesh tremble in their different greeting. 

' A king of cats,' Mercutio calls him. He slays Mercutio. 
Romeo, lashed into wrath, slays him. He is the second 
victim of the event; the second step by which Justice 
marches through blood to her fixed purpose. His death, 



• 



46 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

more than Mercutio's, hurries up the catastrophe. Owing 

to it, Romeo is banished, and Juliet left alone. Owing 

to it, Capulet forces the County Paris on Juliet. Owing 

to that, Juliet takes the drug and is thought by Romeo 

to have died, and Romeo resolves on death. 

Another minor character is the Nurse. Those who have 

seen Mrs. Stirling, when she was old, in that character, 

have seen it perfectly realised. It is an original drawing 

after nature ; all the characteristics of the type are keenly 

observed, generalised, and then embodied in one woman. 

The old retainer of a great house, the confidante of her 

mistress, and of her master's wild life, she takes the 

liberties with them both — the impertinences of an old 

servant — which her knowledge of their life licenses her to 

take ; she advises and reproves them. She is in the inner 

circle of the house, and has her own man to attend on 

her. The licence of the day has not left her untouched. 

She has lost her virgin honour at the age of twelve, and 

her life has been unrestrained No morality has been left 

in her, she is quite without a conscience. Her only 

morality is in her determination to marry Juliet — it 

doesn't matter to whom — and the bigamy she advises at 

the last is quite naturally advised by this naughty old 

woman. Her only religion is a pleasurable excitement 

when she listens to Friar Laurence rebuking Romeo in a 

long speech like a sermon ; 

Lord ! I could have stay'd here all the night 
To hear good counsel : 0, what learning is ! 

Her life is now made up of garrulous recollections. Like 
old folk she repeats her stories over and over again, and 
she loves in them a piece of impropriety to utter over a 
gossip's bowl. Like Mrs. Gamp, whenever she is worried 
she calls for a dram. The ruffling Mercutio gives her, 
pleases rather than offends her ; and her appeal to Peter 
to protect her is of an excellent humour. To make herself 



ROMEO AND JULIET 47 

of importance she plays with Juliet's anxiety to know if 
Romeo will come to be married to her; and worse still, 
she allows Juliet to think that Romeo is slain, not 
Tybalt ; anything to swell her dignity. For this she even 
torments the only one she loves on earth. To keep up 
Juliet's anxiety, which, in its reflection, enhances her im- 
portance, she deviates from the point incessantly — 

Jul. What says he of our marriage ? What of that ? 

Nuese. Lord ! how my head aches ; what a head have I ! 

It beats as it would fall in twenty pieces. 

My back o' t' other side ; ! my back, my back ! 

Jul. I' faith, I am sorry that thou art not well. 

Sweet, sweet, sweet nurso, tell me, what says my love ? 
Nurse. Your love says, like an honest gentleman, and a courteous, 

and a kind, and a handsome, and I warrant a virtuous,— 
Where is your mother ? ' 

And all the time Juliet is simmering with impatient 

passion. 

She has nursed Juliet — they are of one blood, therefore 

she loves her — and she tells the story of it inimitably ; 

with the nearest and most happy phrases. Falstaffwas 

never better in broad humour. She has brought up 

Juliet — a more foolish companion for a young girl could 

scarcely be conceived — but Juliet emerges from her 

governance as pure as crystal. When Juliet is lifted 

into womanhood by her love, and gains thereby moral 

power and spiritual passion, she sees the conscienceless 

character of this old woman ; and when her nurse advises 

her to marry Paris now that Romeo is banished, she 

flings the old wretch out of her heart 

Ancient damnation ! most wicked fiend ! 
Thou and my bosom henceforth shall be twain. 

Yet the old woman is quite endurable. Proper persons 
cannot approve of her, but it would be difficult for them 
to be angry with her. She is too human for that. Her 
garrulity has its charm, and so has her self-sufficiency. 



48 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

Her immorality is natural and primeval, and, when it is 
heartless, is more the result of the society in which she 
has lived than of her original nature. She has good- 
humour, devotion to her house, physical fondness for her 
nursling, and a great respect for the Church. 

She is the last of the minor characters, except the 
Friar, whom I omit at present. I turn now to the 
lovers. 

They meet, and at first sight change eyes, like Rosa- 
lind and Orlando, like Ferdinand and Miranda. Love 
rarely grows in Shakespeare's hands. If it does, it has to 
be helped from without, as with Benedick and Beatrice. 
For the most part, it leaps, full-grown, into life, and is 
reciprocal. Romeo and Juliet take fire at the same 
moment. A single kiss unites them for ever : ' their only 
love sprung from their only hate.' This is the Event to 
which the previous scenes conduct, and from which the 
rest follows. It may be said not to have been made by 
them, but to be the work of a Power without them whose 
aim is to punish the feud, which has injured human 
life so long in Yerona, by the sacrifice of the lovers and 
to put an end to it by their sacrifice. They bear the sins 
of others and carry them away. 

This is certainly, even in so early a play, the intention 
of Shakespeare. The lovers are star-crossed. The Friar, 
at the end of the play, thinking of all he had done to save 
them and heal the feud, confesses that 

A greater power than we can contradict 
Hath thwarted our intents. 

Even Romeo and Juliet dimly feel a fateful presence in 
their love. It steals into that mystic consciousness 
which underlies our common consciousness, and which 
vaguely warns and vaguely prophesies. Both the lovers 
feel beforehand the coming tragedy. This is a piece of 
the mysticism which lay so deep in Shakespeare's mind, 



ROMEO AND JULIET 49 

and which came of his profound conviction that there 

was a Power behind human life which worked for the 

whole, and was apparently careless of the individual. 

Again we are conscious, as the play goes on, of the fierce 

rapidity with which Justice, once she has begun, hurries 

on the action with terrible insistence. She sweeps to her 

conclusion like an eagle on her prey. For a moment 

human effort tries to interfere. The Friar sends to 

Romeo to tell him Juliet is not dead, and waits for him. 

The Power laughs, and stops the messenger. Had he 

arrived, the lovers had been saved. But the lovers have 

their reward. They have their little day of perfect joy. 

They die rather than injure it by living away from it. 

As they have leaped into love, so through love they 

leap into manhood and womanhood. Romeo is now all 

changed from the dreamer into the man of action, and 

of action as prompt as Tybalt's sword. He has no sooner 

seen Juliet at the feast than he storms the orchard wall 

to see her again. 

Can I go forward when my heart is here ? 
Turn back, dull earth, and find thy centre out. 

He will marry her the day after. Instead of gloomy 
silence with his companions, as before, his intellect 
awakens now to life, and he answers Mercutio's wit with 
equal wit — with greater, for Mercutio owns himself beaten. 
And more, he finds Romeo so changed that he thinks 
Romeo has ceased to love at the very moment when for 
the first time he is really in love. His fanciful love for 
Rosaline has made him morose and dull; his real love 
for J uliet makes him sociable and brilliant. 

Mer. Why, is not this better now than groaning for love ? now 
art thou sociable, now art thou Eomeo ; now art thou 
what thou art, by art as well as by nature ; 

Yet, had Mercutio known, it was love that had changed 

the man. All this is excellently conceived by Shakespeare. 

D 



50 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

Juliet is also lifted into full womanhood. To compare 
her speech with her mother and her nurse in the first 
act with her talk with Romeo in the second, is to know 
that she has instantly grown out of the child into the 
woman. All that she does and feels afterwards is pure 
womanhood, full of intelligence and power as well as 
passion, lovely in truth, fidelity, and resolution ; yet 
tender and sweet as childhood. 

With their love, and by it, their whole nature- 
moral, intellectual, passionate, and imaginative — is height- 
ened. Both hold their love within moral restraint. 
They break every convention, but they must have 
marriage and the blessing of the Church. It must be 
a sacramental bond which unites them. We do not 
wonder at the intellectual charm of Romeo's talk, for we 
have seen it even in his talk about Rosaline ; but now, it 
is no longer on fantastic but natural lines. His passion 
gives wings to his brain. But we do wonder at the 
intellectual charm which chimes through the talk of 
Juliet, at her clear sight of things, at her quiet reason- 
ing and self-control even in the hour when she receives 
the passion of Romeo and declares her own ; at her swift 
determination when the crisis comes to do the only 
possible thing ; at her luminous vision, before she drinks 
the drug, of all she has to fear, of all that may happen 
when she wakes in the tomb. 

As to imagination, love has heightened that into 
splendid expression. It exalts their speech into poetry. 
All the beautiful world is laid under contribution to 
illustrate and make more beautiful their love, but the 
love itself is the most beautiful thing they know. It is 
the fountain of their eloquence. And surely no love- 
poetry in the world, rising out of innocent and youthful 
love, with all the warmth of fresh-awakened nature 
longing for union, with the full glow of the south yet 



ROMEO AND JULIET 51 

with a divine innocence in it, and with faith in the 
divinity of natural love, was ever written with such beauty 
as Shakespeare has written the meeting in the orchard, the 
parting on the wedding night, the call of Juliet before it, 
Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds. 

It is imagination at a high and lovely level ; nor does 
the imagination fail when sorrow is as keen in passion 
as joy has been. The steady beat of its noble wing is 
preserved. It is even more strong in the last speech of 
Romeo or of Juliet than it has been before, for death adds 
to imagination a last intensity. 

When Romeo and Juliet first meet after the Mask 
Shakespeare, like a great dramatist, encompasses them 
with scenery as lovely as their love. It is only painted 
by suggestions through their speech, but we see it quite 
clearly. It is night, and only the light of stars, when 
Romeo slips over the wall. There lies the orchard, and 
there the balcony where Juliet stands. While they speak, 
the moon rises, and ' tips with silver all the fruit-tree- 
tops.' Before they part, the morning is at hand. 

Romeo in the deep shade speaks to himself, and then 
hears his mistress tell of her love for him. What an 
outburst of sweet speech ! it makes one in love with 
youth and love. It runs close to the edge of the Over- 
much, but does not fall over it ; it is hyperbole, but many 
men would be happy if such hyperbole were natural to 
them ; if they could feel so deeply as to make it true. 
There is not a phrase which Romeo uses which is not 
the necessary expression of life at its overflow into infinity. 
Only a vast indefinite sea and its furthest shore can 
image his infinite of love. 

I am no pilot ; yet, wert thou as far 

As that vast shore wash'd with the farthest sea, 

I would adventure for such merchandise. 

Juliet is equally passionate ; but of course Shakespeare, 



52 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

with his exquisite tenderness for women, has saved her 
innocence from too great unreserve. She speaks to the 
night her love, unaware of her listener; and when she 
knows he has heard her confession, she delays her yield- 
ing with an array of questions, seeking to recover her 
maiden reserve. When she yields, her speech is perfect in 
its womanhood ; and then, having established her delicate 
maidenhood, excused her seeming light behaviour, she is 
as frank in her love's confession as the day. Her child- 
hood and her womanhood meet in this together; her 
innocent joy in loving and her passion for her lover; now 
a woman, now a child. She lives on that sweet border- 
land. At last, passion, like Romeo, seeks the infinite to 
express itself, and Juliet uses, but in other ways, the 
same symbol as he has done ; 

My bounty is as boundless as the sea, 
My love as deep : the more I give to thee, 
The more I have, for both are infinite. 

They part with lingering, sweet delay. Juliet's speech 
has slowly grown bolder, yet more delicate; and the 
harmonious mingling of these two qualities is beautiful. 
Romeo's speech has passed into a deep simplicity and 
quiet, as if he felt too much to speak; it is only when 
Juliet is gone that he says the truest and most impas- 
sioned thing, 

Sleep dwell upon thine eyes, peace in thy breast ! 
Would I were sleep and peace, so sweet to rest. 

And now the morning comes. Juliet has no past, and 

waits for the future. But Romeo's past is known to the 

Friar, whom he has to persuade to marry him to Juliet. 

'Tis a difficult task, and the Friar is astounded when he 

hears that Rosaline is utterly forgotten — 

Holy St. Francis ! what a change is here ! 

but blindly working the will of Justice, he agrees to 
marry them in order to turn ' their households' rancour 



ROMEO AND JULIET 53 

to pure love ' — so carefully does Shakespeare knit into 
the theme of the play even this sacred personage. But 
he is also careful to individualise the man into a varied 
character. 

Shakespeare was kind to friars, and Laurence is one of 
the best of them. All Verona respects him ; and though 
he has played an audacious part in marrying a Capulet to 
a Montague and in drugging Juliet, his statement of the 
whole case at the end is listened to quietly, and approved. 
The Prince does not even reprove him ; 

We still have known thee for a holy man. 

He has done this for policy, to reconcile the feud of the 
houses. It meets the fate that the interference of 
churchmen iu affairs most often meets. Yet he is more 
the man than the churchman. Indeed, in his humorous 
mocking of Romeo for his forgetting of Rosaline, in his 
tolerance of the hot blood of youth, as well as in his 
challenge to Romeo to be a man and face his suffering 
down, he is not only a charitable priest, but also a man 
of the world. He still remembers his own youth, and has 
an ancient tenderness for the lovers; too old not to try 
and moderate the hurry of their passion by his experience, 
not too old to be kindly to it ; charmed into poetry by 
Juliet's lovely youth and by tender memories of his own 
youth which awaken at her sight — 

Here comes the lady : ! so light a foot 
Will ne'er wear out the everlasting Hint : 
A lover may bestride the gossamer 
That idles in the wanton summer ah-, 
And yet not fall : so light is vanity. 

His age is sententious but not dry; we hear in his 
sermonising that gentle philosophy of life which in a 
good man is nurtured by loneliness. Nor does his bland 
philosophy want a touch of quiet poetry. His eye is 



54 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

quick to see and his voice to celebrate the beauty of 
nature, when in the dawn he comes from his cell ; 

The grey-ey'd morn smiles on the frowning night, 
Chequering the eastern clouds with streaks of light, 
And necked darkness like a drunkard reels 
From forth day's path and Titan's fiery wheels. 

He mingles a rustic science with his poetic feeling; a 
gentle herbalist who loves and studies the medicinable 
plants of the earth, and gathers them for use. While 
yet the dew is deep he seeks them, and musing on their 
qualities and comparing them with the nature of man, so 
slips into his pensive philosophy — a many-natured man ! 
The passage has its charm, and beyond that admits us into 
one of these curious side-paths into which Shakespeare 
wandered in his brooding thoughts on life. 

! mickle is the powerful grace that lies 

In hjrbs, plants, stones, and their true qualities : 

For nought so vile that on the earth doth live, 

But to the earth some special good doth give, 

Nor aught so good but strain'd from that fair use 

Eevolts from true birth, stumbling on abuse ; 

Virtue itself turns vice, being misapplied, 

And vice sometime 's by action dignified. 

Within the infant rind of this small flower 

Poison hath residence and medicine power : 

For this, being smelt, with that part cheers each part ; 

Being tasted, slays all senses with the heart. 

Two such opposed kings encamp them still 

In man as well as herbs, grace and rude will ; 

And where the worser is predominant, 

Full soon the canker death eats up that plant. 

The event which started the movement of the tragedy, 
that is, the sudden love of Romeo and Juliet, is now 
rounded and fulfilled. They are married, and it seems as 
if the deed had awakened to her work the Justice who 
punishes and reconciles the feud which had so long dis- 
tressed Verona. Before even the wedding-night of the 
lovers, she brings to their death Mercutio and Tybalt. 



ROMEO AND JULIET 55 

It is the first of the steps she takes to attain her end, 
and she takes it in spite of Romeo, who hates to fight 
with Tybalt, Juliet's 'dear cousin.' But he is driven 
against his will by an outside power to slay him. Shake- 
speare makes that plain. And now, again, all the streets 
of Verona are in confusion ; again the Prince enters the 
scene to denounce the quarrel, again the far-off cause of 
the tragedy is laid before us. Then Romeo is banished. 
We leave the civic strife behind, and are now, until the 
end, involved in the personal fate of the lovers. 

It is characteristic of Shakespeare's contrasting manner 
that now, at the very moment when doom begins to darken 
over the lovers, he places on Juliet's lips in solitude (for 
indeed we must conceive her words as thought by her, 
not spoken) that rapturous invocation to her wedding- 
night in which the very height of the mingled joy of sense 
and spirit in embracing love is imagined and longed for 
before it is realised. Many would not have dared to 
express it ; few would have felt they had the power to do 
it, and to keep it free from grossness. But it slips, in 
absolute ease, from Shakespeare's sympathy with pure 
yet passionate maidenhood into language so exquisitely 
balanced between sensuous and spiritual passion, so thrilled 
with both inextricably interwoven, so exalted by joy, so 
on fire with beauty, and all so uplifted by the spirit of 
imagination, that it seems as if nothing so wonderful was 
ever written in the world, as if, having been written, it 
should always be felt to be thought rather than written. 

On this youth and ravishment falls the news of Tybalt's 
death and Romeo's banishment. Her lover has slain her 
cousin on her wedding-day, so hot, so quick is Justice on 
her trail. The to-and-fro of her sorrow and her love, the 
final conquest of her sorrow for Tybalt and of her momen- 
tary repulsion from the Montague who has slain a Capulet, 
the disappearance of all anger, all sorrow, all ties of 



56 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

blood, of all the rest of the world, in love and Romeo, 
is a wonderful piece of subtle analysis, the more subtle 
from the simplicity of its execution. 

Romeo's misery is not less impassioned, but more des- 
pairing. The man does not react as quickly as the woman, 
nor see, as quickly as she does, that nothing matters but 
the fulfilment of their love. The sentence of banishment 
brings back the despondent elements in his character, 
and the Friar inspirits him in vain. He is seized by 
those quick despairs of youth which an older man leaves 
behind him. Nothing can be truer to nature than this ; 
and as true is his swift return to life and joy when he 
hears that Juliet will receive him. They meet at night in 
wedded passion, drinking its joy upon the narrow edge of 
death. That mercy Justice permits them. They win it, 
as it were with violence, out of her grim sacrifice of 
them for her own ends. And we are almost satisfied 
that they should die, we almost accept the cruelty of their 
fate, because they have had their perfect hour. Death is 
not much, when life has once reached the top of joy. 

Then comes the parting in the Italian morning. We 
taste its air and see its skies as they speak. The night- 
ingale in the pomegranate tree is silent, the lark has 
begun to sing — 

whose notes do beat 
The vaulty heavens so high above our heads. 

The dawn grows grey, then bright — 

Look, love, what envious streaks 
Do lace the severing clouds in yonder east : 
Night's candles are burnt out, and jocund day 
Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops. 

But more beautiful even than this beauty of nature is 
the passion in their hearts and its expression — steeped in 
sorrow, drenched in love, still trembling with desire. And 
because of these, of a poetry so exquisite in feeling, so 



ROMEO AND JULIET 57 

exalted by imagination, so thrilled with the memory of 
satisfied love and with the agony of present departure, and 
of so perfect a melody, that it seems made of the best of 
all the poets of the world. Sorrow and fear give keenness 
to the lingering of love ; and hope, almost afraid, glides 
into the verse and then retreats. The shadow darkens 
over them; the mysticism of Shakespeare intrudes on 
their parting, to presage their death — 

Jul. ! think'st thou we shall ever meet again ? 

Rom. I doubt it not ; and all these woes shall serve 

For sweet discourses in our time to come. 
Jul. God ! I have an ill-divining soul : 

Methinks I see thee, now thou art so low, 

As one dead in the bottom of a tomb : 

Either my eyesight fails, or thou look'st pale. 
Eom. And trust me, love, in my eye so do you : 

Dry sorrow drinks our blood. Adieu ! adieu ! 

So Romeo departs, banished by the hand of Justice. 
Then she plays her next card, swiftly driving on her 
action. If she were not a goddess, it were unseemly 
haste to marry Juliet one day to Romeo, and propose the 
next day that she should be married to County Paris. 
Yet that is what she does, that is the card she plays 
m her determined speed. No sooner is Juliet out of 
Romeo's arms, than her mother comes in with this 
new proposition. It is enough to madden the child ; 
though her intellectual power is never better seen than 
in the way she seems to attack Romeo for Tybalt's death, 
while in reality she expresses her love for him ; and she 
refuses indignantly. Her father rates her with senile 
fury; his language shocks her mother and her nurse; we 
see the temper which has made the feud continue ; and 
Juliet is silenced into one piteous prayer — 

Is there no pity sitting in the clouds 
That sees into the bottom of my grief ? 

Her mother leaves her — 'Do as thou wilt, for I have 



58 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

done with thee.' She turns to her Nurse ; a sense of fate 
is in the words, and great piteousness ; 

Alack, alack ! that heaven should practise stratagems 
Upon so soft a subject as myself ! 
What say'st thou 1 hast thou not a word of joy ? 
Some comfort, Nurse ? 

But the only consolation the Nurse gives is to advise 
immediate marriage with Paris, who is ' a lovely gentle- 
man.' Few passages reveal in briefer words more of lonely 
despair than those in which Juliet meets this traitorous 
counsel. Father, mother, Nurse are all against her, but 
this girl of fourteen is resolute: she knits her powers 
together into quietude. What she will do, she will do 
alone — 

Jul. Speakest thou this from thy heart 1 

Nurse. And from my soul too ; 

Or else beshrew them both. 

Jul. Amen ! 

Nurse. What ! 

Jul. Well, thou hast comforted me marvellous much. 

Go in ; and tell my lady I am gone, 
Having displeas'd my father, to Laurence' cell, 
To make confession, and to be absolved. 

Nurse. Marry, I will ; and this is wisely done. 

[Exit Nurse. 

Jul. Ancient damnation ! most wicked fiend ! 

To deepen her misery, she meets Paris, its cause, who 

claims her for his wife, at the Friar's cell. Her despair 

helps her to be reticent. Only when he goes, does her 

passion break forth — 

! shut the door ! and when thou hast done so, 
Come, weep with me ; past hope, past cure, past help ! 

Rather than marry Paris, her knife shall play the 
umpire in this strife between her honour and her fate. 
Her speech is wild, the outburst of long-repressed pain, 
seeking in whirling images to relieve itself. But what 
a difference from the child of the first act ! A few days 
of love have done the work of many years. Her woman- 



ROMEO AND JULIET 59 

hood is not only born; it is mature enough to look 

death in the face. Yet her youth makes death seem 

horrible, and she is haunted by its ghastly images ; 

Or shut me nightly in a charnel house, 
O'ercover'd quite with dead men's rattling bones, 
With reeky shanks, and yellow chapless skulls ; 
Or bid me go into a new-made grave 
And hide me with a dead man in his shroud ; 

Sh8 is sane in her resolution of death rather than 
dishonour, half insane in her imagination — a subtle situa- 
tion of the soul, such as Shakespeare loved, in the midst 
of his simplicities of passion, to draw for his own delight. 

The Friar then proposes the drug which shall make 
her seem dead for forty-two hours, and Romeo shall fetch 
her then away from the tomb of the Capulets. She 
takes the drug that night, alone, with a woman's wild 
courage, but with a child's imaginative fears, and the 
fourth act closes with her apparent death. Meantime 
Justice, not to be baulked, plays her next card. She so 
arranges events that the Friar's letter to Romeo fails to 
reach him. And then the ruin rushes, without a break, 
to its close. The fifth act doubles and redoubles the 
fierce hurry of Justice to her aim. There is no scene 
more heavy-laden with death than that in the church- 
yard, nor one in which the scenery is more vividly 
conceived. Fear, trembling, and horror possess all the 
characters but Romeo, Paris, and Juliet; their love lifts 
them above the power of Death's attendants. Darkness 
is everywhere; only a lanthorn lights the tomb. The 
yew-trees darken the churchyard. The ground is loose, 
infirm with digging up of graves. Romeo cries out at 
the tomb in a madness of raging grief, 

Thou detestable maw, thou womb of death, 
as he wrenches open the door. It is a masterpiece of 
representation to the intellectual eye. No visible scenery 
is needed. 



60 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

The dramatic action is not less remarkable : the inces- 
sant rush of circumstance, the change of the actors at 
every moment, save when Romeo is alone in the tomb ; 
the haste, the high-pitched excitement of all the 
characters, even of the Page and Balthasar, as if the 
fierce passion of Romeo had infected them all; the 
silences, the cries from every part of the churchyard! 
And finally the watch, the rousing of the town, the rush 
of Capulet and Montague to the grave, the streets full 
with running men and women, the Prince, and in the 
midst Paris, Romeo, and Juliet dead. We are lost in 
admiration. Only a playwright could have composed it 
for the stage, and the playwright one whose imaginative 
genius excelled Bacon's as the sun excels the moon. 

But I return to the beginning of the act. It opens with 

Romeo at Mantua, waiting for news. It is characteristic 

of Shakespeare's mysticism, that, as he has made both 

Romeo and Juliet have presentiments of evil, so here he 

represents a common contrary — that excited happiness of 

the spirit which so frequently precedes death and ruin, the 

state the Scots call 'fey.' Romeo has had sweet dreams; 

If I may trust the flattering truth of sleep, 
My dreams presage some joyful news at hand ; 
My bosom's lord sits lightly in his throne ; 
And all this day an unaccustom'd spirit 
Lifts me above the ground with cheerful thoughts. 

On that, swift as lightning, comes the news that Juliet is 
dead. He receives it with the same quiet with which 
Juliet received the news that she was to be married to 
Paris, that quiet which comes of the instant and intense 
resolve to die. His youth is swift to act, as swift as 
his absolute despair. The resolute centre of all his sorrow 
is given in a word ; 

Well, Juliet, I will lie with thee to-night. 

The means are at hand — ' I do remember an apothecary ' 



ROMEO AND JULIET 61 

— a famous description, and so long that some have 
wondered that Romeo, in his intense passion, could 
enter into so much and so clear detail. But it is often 
when passion is most intense that men not only see out- 
ward things most sharply and in minute detail, but also, 
perhaps to relieve the awful strain within, play with the 
illusive scenery of life. All the deeper is his resolve to 
die. It is piteous that he so young should suddenly 
become cynical, but Shakespeare knew the quick- 
changing heart of youth when despair has fallen on 
love. This is a momentary cry. There is nothing of its 
bitterness in the soliloquy in the tomb. 

There is thy gold, worse poison to men's souls, 
Doing more murders in this loathsome world, 
Than these poor compounds that thou may'st not sell : 
I sell thee poison, thou hast sold me none. 
Farewell ; buy food, and get thyself in flesh. 

And he races to Yerona to die by Juliet's side. 

Paris has been before him. Justice wants another 
victim to make the sacrifice complete, and Paris is laying 
flowers on the body of Juliet when Romeo enters. We 
hear from what he says to Balthasar, his servant, into 
what fierce intensity he has been wrought during the 
long night of travel. If thou return'st to pry 

In what I further shall intend to do, 

By heaven, I will tear thee joint by joint, 

And strew this hungry churchyard with thy limbs ; 

The time and my intents are savage wild. 

What chance has poor, foolish Paris with one whom 
deadly sorrow all night long has wrought ? Romeo tries 
to save him. In vain ! he falls, and dies for his love ; 

If thou be merciful, 
Open the tomb, lay me with Juliet. 

Romeo recognises him, and that he is one writ with 
him in sour misfortune's book. Death brings all enmities 



62 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

into harmony, and he lays Paris in the tomb. And there 
is Juliet, whose beauty makes the vault full of light. 
He speaks, and ever since all the world has listened. We 
see the silence, the dim light, the vaulted tomb, the lovely 
face, not dead, but dead to him. His soul lives in every 
word, his love, his sorrow, his imaginative fire, his un- 
utterable weariness of life. Tenderness is supreme in 
this lovely speech. Truth thrills through it like a spirit ; 
beauty, like another spirit, is wedded to the truth in it, 
and the ' passion of death ' lifts the truth and beauty and 
tenderness of it into the world where death is lost in life. 

How oft when men are at the point of death 

Have they been merry ! which their keepers call 

A lightning before death : ! how may I 

Call this a bgktning 1 O my love ! my wife ! 

Death, that hath suck'd the honey of thy breath, 

Hath had no power yet upon thy beauty : 

Thou art not conquer'd ; beauty's ensign yet 

Is crimson in thy lips and in thy cheeks, 

And death's pale flag is not advanced there. 

Tybalt, liest thou there in thy bloody sheet 1 

! what more favour can I do to thee, 

Than with that hand that cut thy youth in twain 

To sunder his that was thine enemy 1 

Forgive me, cousin ! Ah ! dear Juliet, 

Why art thou yet so fair 1 Shall I believe 

That unsubstantial Death is amorous, 

And that the lean abhorred monster keeps 

Thee here in dark to be his paramour ? 

For fear of that I still will stay with thee, 

And never from this palace of dim night 

Depart again : here, here will I remain 

With worms that are thy chambermaids ; ! here 

Will I set up my everlasting rest, 

And shake the yoke of inauspicious stars 

From this Avorld-wearied flesh. Eyes, look your last 1 

Arms, take your last embrace ! and lips, you 

The doors of breath, seal with a righteous kiss 

A dateless bargain to engrossing death 1 

Come, bitter conduct, come, unsavoury guide ! 

Thou desperate pilot, now at once run on 

The dashing rocks thy sea-sick weary bark I 



ROMEO AND JULIET 63 

Who is to act this? Shakespeare has thought more 
than any actor can represent. 

Nor is Juliet's death less passionate, though swifter. A 
■woman does not play with thought or its expression on 
the edge of death. Moreover, she has faced death for 
the last three days. She is accustomed to its companion- 
ship. 

What 's here 1 a cup, clos'd in my true love's hand 1 

Poison, I see, hath been his timeless end. 

O churl ! drunk all, and left no friendly drop 

To help me after ! I will kiss thy lips ; 

Haply, some poison yet doth hang on them, 

To make me die with a restorative. [Kisses him.] 

Thy lips are warm ! 

happy dagger ! 
This is thy sheath ; there rest, and let me die. 

And in the tomb is the silence of three dead lovers. 
On this silence comes the uproar I have described : the 
cries of the watch, the arrest of the Friar, of the Page, 
and Balthasar ; the Capulets, the Montagues, the people 
and the Prince. The stage fills. 

Justice has done her work. She has passed through 
a lake of innocent blood to her end. Tybalt, Mercutio, 
Paris, Romeo, Juliet, Lady Montague, have all died 
that she might punish the hate between the houses. 
Men recognise at last that a Power beyond them has been 
at work. 'A greater power,' cries the Friar to Juliet, 
' than we can contradict hath thwarted our intents.' 
The Friar explains the work of Justice to the Prince ; the 
Prince applies the punishment to the guilty — 

Where be these enemies 1 Capulet ! Montague ! 

See what a scourge is laid upon your hate, 

That heaven finds means to kill your joys with love ; 

And I, for winking at your discords too, 

Have lost a brace of kinsmen ; all are punish'd. 

The reconciliation follows. That is the aim of Justice. 
The long sore of the state is healed. But at what a price ? 



64 LECTUKES ON SHAKESPEARE 

We ask, was it just or needful to slay so many for this end ? 
Could it not have been otherwise done? And Shake- 
speare, deeply convinced, even in his youth, of the irony 
of life, deeply affected by it as all his tragedies prove, 
has left us with that problem to solve, in this, the first 
of his tragedies ; and has surrounded the problem with 
infinite pity and love, so that, if we are troubled, it may 
be angry, with the deeds of the gods, we are soothed and 
uplifted by our reverent admiration for humanity. 

Shakespeare could not tell, nor can we, how otherwise 
it might have been shaped ; but to be ignorant is not to 
be content. We are left by the problem in irritation. If 
the result the gods have brought about be good, the 
means they used seem clumsy, even cruel, and we do not 
understand. This is a problem which incessantly recurs 
in human life, and as Shakespeare represented human 
life, it passes like a questioning spirit through several of 
his plays. I do not believe that he began any play with 
the intention of placing it before us, much less of trying 
to solve it. But as he wrote on, the problem emerged 
under his hand, and he became aware of it. He must 
have thought about it, and there are passages in Romeo 
and Juliet which suggest such thinking, and such passages 
are more frequent in the after tragedies. But with that 
strange apartness of his from any personal share in human 
trouble, which is like that of a spirit outside humanity — 
all the more strange because he represented that trouble 
so vividly and felt for it so deeply — he does not attempt 
to solve or explain the problem. He contents himself 
with stating the course of events which constitute it, and 
with representing how human nature, specialised in dis- 
tinct characters, feels when entangled in it. 

This is his general way of creating, and it is the way of 
the great artist who sets forth things as they are, but 



ROMEO AND JULIET 65 

neither analyses nor moralises them. But this does not 
prevent any dominant idea of the artist, such as might 
arise in his imagination from contemplation of his subject, 
pervading the whole of his work, even unconsciously 
arranging it and knitting it into unity. Such an idea 
seems to rule this play. It seems from the way the 
events are put by Shakespeare and their results worked 
out, that he conceived a Power behind the master-event 
who caused it and meant the conclusion to which it 
was brought. This Power might be called Destiny or 
Nemesis — terms continually used by writers on Shake- 
speare, but which seem to me to assume in his knowledge 
modes of thought of which he was unaware. What he 
does seem to think is ; That, in the affairs of men, long- 
continued evil, such as the hatreds of the Montagues and 
Capulets or the Civil Wars in England, was certain to be 
tragically broken up by the suffering it caused, and to be 
dissolved in a reconciliation which should confess the 
evil and establish its opposite good ; and that this was the 
work of a divine Justice which, through the course of 
affairs, made known that all hatreds — as in this case and 
in the Civil Wars — were against the Universe. We may 
call this Power Fate or Destiny. It is better to call it, as 
the Greek did, Justice. This is the idea which Shake- 
speare makes preside over Romeo and Juliet, and over 
the series of plays which culminates in Richard III. 
When we come to the great tragedies this belief of his 
seems to have suffered shock. Though it lingers in 
Hamlet in such a phrase as this of Horatio's — ' There 's a 
divinity doth shape our ends, Rough hew them as we 
may ' — yet it has weakened ; and it seems replaced in 
Hamlet and Macbeth by the conception of a Destiny 
which drives its victims headlong to their death or rain, 
and the larger ends of whose justice, if it be just at all, 
we do not see clearly as we see them in Romeo and Juliet 

E 



66 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

and in Richard III. Hamlet dies a victim of events 
which occurred before he comes to Elsinore, and carries 
with him to death innocent and guilty alike. Without 
those events his character would not have slain him. 
No good is seen to arise from his tragedy. 'The rest 
is silence,' says Shakespeare. A blind, half-supernatural 
power of evil starts Macbeth on his course of crime, 
not the desire of Justice to set wrong things right in the 
state. Things were not wrong under Duncan. Macbeth's 
crime brings its natural result, but we are not made 
conscious of a presiding Justice as we are in Romeo and 
Juliet. Shakespeare seems to have lost that belief. 

In Lear and Othello it is not only weakened or 
lost, it is opposed, it seems, by another conception, or 
perhaps I should say by another temper of mind, which, 
looking at the world's misery and guilt, was led to feel 
rather than to conceive that it was not Justice or 
Destiny that ruled the world, but a ruthless irony which 
played with men and women to pleasure its own cynicism, 
as if the gods sat in a theatre and watched with weary 
eyes the tragedy, comedy, or farce they ordained for 
their careless entertainment. It is not Justice which is 
done; Justice is not their aim, but amusement. And 
when the curtain is rung down, they think no more of 
Lear, Othello, Troilus, or Timon. It is not even the 
Destiny of the Greek which sacrifices Othello, Cordelia, 
Desdemona, or even Ophelia. It is a blind or a cynical 
Will which plays with men and women as if they were 
marionettes. It was well that Shakespeare did not 
for long continue in this temper, but that he passed 
through it is, I think, not to be doubted by those who 
read Othello, Troilus and Cressida, and especially King 
Lear. He is passing out of it in Ooriolanus, and in 
Julius Ccesar he has emerged from it. 

Nevertheless, this temper did not wholly master him 



ROMEO AND JULIET 67 

while he was under its sway. A strange impression, like 
a spirit proceeding out of the whole of his tragic work, 
a subconscious efflux from it, leads us to feel, through 
the pit) 7 with which he encompasses the victims of 
sorrow, and through the nobleness with w r hich he clothes 
them, that they were not the mere sport of an ironical 
Power, but rose above it into a higher world, where such a 
Power could not follow them. It is so when we think of 
Othello and Desdemona, of Lear and Cordelia. I do not 
say that Shakespeare was directly conscious of making 
such an impression when he wrote Lear and Othello. 
He could scarcely be, as long as he felt that Justice 
did not rule the world. But he does make it on us, and 
in him it was an unconscious reversion to that original 
type of his thought about the universe, which is to be 
found in Romeo and Juliet and in Richard III. He there 
imagined an eternal Justice, such as iEschylus conceived, 
' the virgin daughter of Zeus,' who directed the fates of 
men and who insisted that evil should come to an end. 

Yet there is a difference. The work of Justice in 
^Eschylus is simple. No complex problem is bound up 
with it; it is the assertion of divine law in the punish- 
ment of the guilty. But in Romeo and Juliet the work 
of Justice is done through the sorrow and death of the 
innocent, and the evil Justice attacks is destroyed 
through the sacrifice of the guiltless. Justice, as 
Shakespeare saw her, moving to issues which concern 
the whole, takes little note of the sufferings of indi- 
viduals save to use them, if they are good and loving, 
for her great purposes, as if that were enough to make 
them not only acquiescent but happy. Romeo and 
Juliet, who are quite guiltless of the hatreds of their 
clans, and who embody the loving-kindness which would 
do away with them, are condemned to mortal pain and 
sorrow of death. Shakespeare accepted this apparent in- 



68 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

justice as the work of Justice ; and the impression made 
at the end upon us, which impression does not arise from 
the story itself, but steals into us from the whole work of 
Shakespeare on the story, is that Justice may have done 
right, though we do not understand her ways. The 
tender love of the two lovers and its beauty, seen in 
their suffering, awaken so much pity and love that the 
guilty are turned away from their evil hatreds, and 
the evil itself is destroyed. And with regard to the 
sufferers themselves, there is that — we feel with Shake- 
speare — in their pain and death which not only re- 
deems and blesses the world they have left, but which 
also lifts them into that high region of the soul where 
suffering and death seem changed into joy and life. 
We think of them, but in a way we cannot explain, no 
longer with pity, but with a certainty that all is well 
with them, that they have arisen into a true happiness, 
have become a vital portion of the Justice and Love which 
sacrificed them for the welfare of the whole. Instead of 
mourning over their fate, we are content : as we are content 
when Cordelia and Desdemona perish, even though Shake- 
speare, grimmer then than he is now, does not bring any 
recognisable good out of their pain. Even in their sorrow, 
still more in the wild misery of Othello, we feel by a kind 
of subconsciousness that they are in that kingdom of the 
soul, and worthy of it, where the pain and death of earth 
are like dreams when one awaketh, where what they have 
become through suffering lives for the inspiration of 
humanity and attracts its love. 

A few observations may be made on the poetry of this 
play. First, it is sometimes conventional in its phrases. 
Shakespeare was a playwright, and his audience expected 
to hear, certainly at intervals, the phraseology to which 
they were accustomed. It was wise, then, of him to use 



ROMEO AND JULIET 69 

it, and even at times to heighten beyond the simplicity of 
nature the speech of his characters. Such a convention 
occurs in the speeches of Old Montague and Benvolio in 
the first act, which describe Romeo's isolation in his love 
for Rosaline. They are more flowery than natural. But 
with regard to them and other conventions in the play, 
they are so inspirited with imagination that we forget 
they are conventions, and are almost surprised into 
accepting them as natural because they are so beautifully 
said. Moreover, in the special instance I have mentioned, 
we forgive them, not only for their beauty, but also be- 
cause they strike the keynote of the love-poetry of the 
play, and enable us to grow into the passionate temper in 
which the orchard scene and Juliet's invocation and the 
parting in the morning of the lovers are conceived and 
wrought. They are another example of Shakespeare's 
careful gradation. 

Secondly, certain soliloquies must be considered as 
representing thought, not speech. They are to make the 
audience understand what is passing through the mind 
of the character, not what, under the circumstances, he 
would have said aloud. Not all, but a large number of 
Shakespeare's soliloquies are of this character. A maiden 
might easily say aloud what Juliet says at the beginning 
of the night scene from her balcony. It is intimate, 
but not too intimate for speech. But her speech, 

Gallop apace, you fiery-footed steeds, 
represents the secret passion of her body and soul, and 
Juliet would not in life have said it aloud. And her 
soliloquy when in bed she takes the drug is also a repre- 
sentation of her thoughts ; it was not spoken in reality. 
The dramatist is compelled to put it into words and 
the actress to speak it — but to add to it gesture or 
great changes in the voice or outward show is to mistake 
altogether the idea of the dramatist. These soliloquies 



70 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

should be kept quiet ; the actor or actress should, while 
they speak them, feel them to represent voiceless thought; 
and the audience should listen to them with the same 
feeling. If we take this view of them, and that Shake- 
speare meant them to be so considered, a great deal in 
them which seems too fantastical, too wild, even too 
sensational for fine poetry, is both natural and excusable. 
In some soliloquies, as for instance that of Romeo in the 
tomb, the contents are mixed. Of this much was said 
aloud, but some things were only thought by Romeo, and 
a great actor should make this clear. When he does, he 
varies easily the delivery of a soliloquy which is too often 
ranted from beginning to end, and ranted most when it 
ought to be most quiet. 

I have spoken of the love-poetry. It has, whether in 
its sorrow or delight, the passion, the charm, and the 
over-brimming of youth. Imagination is in it like a 
living spirit, but fancy plays through its lighter thoughts, 
as when Juliet cries, 

Give me my Romeo : and, -when he shall die, 
Take him and cut him out in little stars, 
And he will make the face of heaven so fine 
That all the world will be in love with night, 
And pay no worship to the garish sun. 

Its hyperbole is natural to youth. Moreover, Shakespeare 
knew the Italian tales where this kind of love-talk is so 
frequent that it must rank as conventional. But in 
Shakespeare's hands it is exalted into poetry by his im- 
passioned imagination, and his incessant aspiration to 
beauty. Finally, he has in this poetry that modern quality 
which combines human passion with the doings of nature. 
He harmonises nature to the human feeling of the hour. 
The moon on the orchard-trees, the solitary star, the silent 
nightingale, and the lark heralding the morn, are as much 
in tune with the hearts of the lovers as the roaring wind 
and cataract-rain are to the heart of Lear. 



Ill 

RICHARD II 

In 1592, the first part of Henry VI. was acted at the 
Rose Theatre, on March 3. The second part, it is pre- 
sumed, followed; and the third part the following 
autumn. These plays were originally written by other 
men than Shakespeare and were, as some conjecture, 
revised by Shakespeare and Marlowe in partnership. If 
so, Shakespeare worked afterwards upon them alone, after 
Marlowe's death. There are passages, notably at the 
end of the third part of Henry VI, where Gloucester's 
character is brought into harmony with his character 
in Richard III, which are entirely from Shakespeare's 
hand. Whether these Gloucester passages were written 
before or after Richard III., they lead up to that play, 
which of all the historical plays of Shakespeare is said 
to be the first composed, and was probably acted early 
in 1593. Richard II. followed, it is supposed, almost 
immediately on Richard III. ; and many say that as 
the verse and style of Richard III. emulated Marlowe's, 
so Richard II. was suggested by Marlowe's Edward II. 
It may be so, I do not know. What we do know is 
that the work of both plays is done in the manner of an 
artist whose style is his own. In fire and fury of move- 
ment and utterance, in passion of action and rhetoric, in 
dramatic power and in gloom of fate, Richard III. is 
greater, or shall I say more remarkable, than Richard II. 
In wisdom, thoughtfulness, in a wider range over human 
nature, in a kindlier humanity, a softer glow, in the pity 

71 



72 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

which accompanies the dark work of fate, and especially in 
the loveliness of the poetry, Richard II. excels Richard III. 
It seems astonishing that within a year, two plays, each 
so great, yet each imbued with so different a spirit, should 
have been written ; but after all it is, at this creative time, 
no more astonishing than the writing within a few years 
of plays so different as Tamburlaine and Edward II. 

There are, however, other reasons which suggest 
that Richard II. preceded Richard III. Richard II. 
is more full of the flowing poetry, so rich in senti- 
ment, which belongs to most of the previous plays. 
Rhyme is the natural form of such poetry, and it is 
used copiously in Richard II, and very sparingly in 
Richard III. The play has less power, less incident, 
less action, and more of sentiment than Richard III. ; 
it is less close in texture and less complex — that is, it is 
inferior in dramatic strength and vitality. As an his- 
torical drama Richard III. is on a higher level than 
Richard II. Both are fateful, but the fate that broods 
over Richard III. is of a deeper, more solemn gloom, and 
seems to argue a more experienced hand, a graver cast of 
thought, a more serious view of history. These consider- 
ations might lead us to say that Richard III. followed its 
companion ; a conclusion I do not accept. 

The discussion, however, as to which was first, is not 
of any importance. The plays were written within the 
same year, and the reason of their difference in manner, 
strength, experience, and versification ma}^ not arise from 
any change in Shakespeare's dramatic power, but simply 
from an artist's desire of change. Shakespeare may have 
written them differently in order to vary his hand, or 
because he felt that the character of Richard II, being 
itself sentimental, fantastic, and fluent, was best repre- 
sented by the fluid, hurrying, rhyming measures he used, 
and that of Richard III. by the stately gravity of blank 



RICHARD II 73 

verse. The subject then, in both cases, would make the 
differences. 

Why did Shakespeare and his fellows begin to write 
plays the subjects of which were drawn from English 
history? It was that a change had passed over the 
spirit of England. She had begun to realise, as she had 
not before, how great she was, how separate from other 
nations, how free from foreign influences and powers, 
how united, in spite of some hostile and dividing elements, 
were her Queen and nobles, burghers and people. A great 
and imaginative pride in England filled the hearts of men 
before 1580, thirteen years before Richard III., and is 
plainly revealed in Spenser's Faerie Queene. Loyalty to 
Elizabeth as representing this great people now became 
a passion. France and Spain, hating her Protestantism, 
were against the Queen ; and though she did not wish for 
war, though she and her ministers avoided it all they 
could, yet they matched themselves, in the secret drift 
of their policy, against the Continental powers; played 
France against Spain and Spain against France, till 
Philip, the great overshadower of Europe, was sorely 
troubled. When the sea-dogs of England took up the 
game, bled, harried, and plundered Spain in the Spanish 
main, the folk in England praised God. When in 1587 
Drake came home laden with spoil, having ravaged the 
cities, and taken the galleons, of the western coasts of the 
Americas, and rounded the world ; when he stormed Spain 
in her own ports, singeing the very beard of Philip, 
England burst into pride and joy. Philip at last was 
hurried into fury; and all the world looked on with 
wonder when the Armada, manned by the flower of Spain,, 
was driven to flight by a host of small ships ; and in her 
flight perished, ship by ship, in the northern seas, and on 
the western coasts of Great Britain and Ireland. 

The victory was felt to be not only political but moral. 



74 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

God, they said, was on the side of England ; and the heart 
of her people swelled with a religious awe and gratitude 
when it felt itself chosen as the avenger of injustice and 
cruelty ; swelled as high with personal pride when it also 
began to know itself to be the mistress of the seas. No 
wonder the Faerie Queene rose from the heart of Spenser. 
No wonder the dramatists, and Marlowe beyond the rest 
in Edward II, began the long series of historical plays. 
No wonder Shakespeare, whose humanity felt all that the 
nation felt, turned to record the history of his people ; and 
having re-edited Henry VI, began with Richard II. and 
Richard III. to describe the past sins, sorrows, glories, 
and the march of freedom, of his people. All his historical 
plays have their root in patriotism or some outburst of 
patriotic passion. It were well to collect them together, 
but none are finer, not even the closing words of the 
Royal Bastard in King John, 

This England never did, nor never shall, 

Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror, 

But when it first did help to wound itself. 

Now these her princes are come home again, 

Come the three corners of the world in arms, 

And we shall shock them. Nought shall make us rue 

If England to itself do rest but true. 

than the great cry of Gaunt from his dying bed in 
Richard II. All who love their country know it well. 
This patriotism fills the heart of Henry IV. : and the play 
of Henry V. is full of the sound of trumpets blowing to 
the glory of England. Had it not been so damaged by the 
pirates who took it up eagerly because it so spread-eagled 
England, it would have come down to us less injured 
by passages unworthy of Shakespeare's dignity. 

Of this historical and patriotic drama these two Richard- 
plays are the first entirely written by Shakespeare. He 
made of them — and this point is of great interest — a 
framework to enclose a greater drama of the Civil Wars. 



RICHARD II 75 

He traced their origin, as he conceived it to be, in the 
usurpation of Bolingbroke and the deposition of Richard. 
He drew in Richard II. the political causes, which were 
also the moral causes, of Richard's overthrow, and pre- 
saged the evils which would follow for the state from the 
rough seizure of the crown by Bolingbroke. 

Then he drew in Richard III. the close; the final 
working out by avenging Justice of the punishment of 
civil war. He made it clear that the war was caused by 
the ambitions, jealousies, hatreds of great princes and 
nobles, who remembered only themselves, and forgot the 
welfare of the people. As the story of Romeo and Juliet 
expressed the wrath of Justice against the hatreds by 
which the Montagues and Capulets disquieted Verona, so 
the dramas from Richard II. to Richard III. told how 
the justice of moral evolution punished the kings and 
nobles who made England swim in blood. 

When Shakespeare had written the beginning and the 
end of this, it stole into the chambers of his imagination 
to write the intermediate story, to paint the full picture. 
He had already done some of this work in the three parts 
of Henry VI. ; and I think he now made a fresh revision 
of those plays, and added some few things to them, which 
would serve to round out this idea of his. Then he filled 
up his space with Henry IV. and Henry V., and the thing 
was done. 

Some suggest he did this with a purpose — to show 
what bad government was, and its evils; what good 
government was, and its results. I do not think this 
true. His purpose was artistic. He desired to complete 
his conception, to combine all the plays into a whole. In 
completing it, the moral and political philosophy of good 
or bad government came in, as a necessary part of the 
conception, but its lessons were not directly but indirectly 
given. His true aim was to represent human life in action 



76 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

and thought within the events which history laid before 
him. He did that ; and then the parts shaped themselves, 
under his guiding conception, into an artistic whole. He 
saw it, and rejoiced. 

The artistic result is remarkable. We have, in these 
eight plays, not only eight separate plays, five of which 
are complete within themselves, but one single drama also, 
with a unity of its own, with one subject, with one end to 
which they look forward, and with one divine Justice in 
them, slowly working out its laws to their fulfilment. 
And the years over which this mighty drama extends 
are nearly ninety years. I wish it were possible to act 
them all in the same day. It would then be seen that 
Richard III. wound up that web of fate which began to 
be woven in Richard II. ; and which, weaving on through 
Henry IV., V., and VI, contains in its living tapestry so 
great and various a representation of human life as never 
yet was brought together and harmonised by any genius 
in the modern world ; of life in all classes of society ; of 
life passing from the most tragic sorrows to the most 
comic even the rudest pleasures; life in the streets of 
London, in the country, on the battlefield, in the council, 
at the court and the alehouse, in the camps of France and 
England, by the dying bed of kings, and in the garret 
where Falstaff passed away with a broken heart. 

The Greek trilogies carry us through long histories, and 
they are united by the dominance of Destiny working 
out her moral will. This eight-played drama is a bolder 
effort. The justice of God, ruling states (for such at 
this time of his life was Shakespeare's belief), works 
out in these plays his single aim, and unites them into 
one Drama. Again, they have not the same unbroken 
solemnity and dignity which the Greek trilogies possess. 
They are broken up with comedy and farce, with many 
scenes unrelated to the end, with the creation of a host of 



RICHARD II 77 

needless characters, with many things said and done which 
exceed just measure. They have indeed their grea't and 
dignified scenes both of action and speech, scattered and 
mingled through the rest, and these have a great weight 
and power. They heighten and establish the whole 
impression, given to us in the plays, of human life which 
indeed is a more mingled landscape than any Greek play 
represents. The plays have, then, a greater variety, a 
larger range over human life, than any single trilogy ; nor 
do they want, when we feel them as a whole, an awful 
solemnity. Their work is unequal, and that is not the 
case with the giant work of iEschylus, or the steady great- 
ness of Sophocles — men who do not drop below their 
power ; but Shakespeare was now only learning his work. 
We do not have him here at his best. Moreover, and 
this is a great pity, the three plays of Henry VI. are not 
originally from his hand. Had he rewritten them alto- 
gether, and on the same level as even the two Richard 
plays, the splendour of this great single drama, made up 
of eight plays, would blind the eyes of the intellect and 
of the soul of man. 

Again, the dramas of Richard II. and 777. are purely 
historical. Their subject, their persons, their events, were 
taken by Shakespeare, without change, almost without 
addition, from the chronicles. They move among kings, 
nobles, and their dependants. The people are unrepre- 
sented except by one or two persons, like the gardener in 
Richard II, like the two citizens in Richard III. 

In the second type of the historical play which Shake- 
speare afterwards invented — in Henry IV. and V. — many 
additions are made to the history. The people are 
brought in, and drawn with mastery. The great folk 
are there, but so are the other classes — the country 
justice, his servant, the rustic recruits, the common 
soldiers, the mistress of a London tavern, the grooms, 



78 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

ostlers, and travellers, thieves, sheriff-officers, courtezans 
and bullies, the broken-down gentleman, the merchants, 
the clergy, — a crowd of types, all invented, all making 
history vital, all disclosing what lay beneath the battles 
of kings and nobles, of kites and crows, in the upper 
air of society. 

Richard II. has none of this, nor Richard III. Nothing 
is added to events, or to the personages, save the develop- 
ment of their characters. In this play, the character of 
Richard, carefully and slowly wrought, dominates the 
whole, makes the events and makes the catastrophe. It 
is the play. The character of Bolingbroke is quite 
secondary. Its outlines are drawn, but they are only 
partly filled up. What he is meant to be is more seen 
in his opposition to Richard than in himself. He is the 
strong man against the background of whose character 
the weakness of Richard stands out clear. But Shake- 
speare kept the full presentation of his character till he 
came to write Henry IV. 

The Duke of York is a good sketch, but in his senile 
bluster of words, and his weak reversal of them when 
any action is required, and in his soft yielding to fate, 
he is only a faded representation of what Richard, without 
his touch of genius, might have been as an old man. 
Even in his furious demand for his son's death as a pledge 
of his loyalty to Bolingbroke — a scene which is quite 
unworthy of Shakespeare — he is another image of the 
excess into which weakness of will is so often betrayed. 
His haste, his fury, his exaggerated defiance of natural 
feeling — how could a father ask the King to slay his son ? 
— are nothing more than weakness desperately trying to 
convince itself that it is strong, a condition of soul into 
which Richard falls again and again. His loyalty, which 
is his religion, is first broken down by the iniquity of the 
King, yet in principle is retained. Then circumstance 



RICHARD II 79 

steals even his principle away, and he joins Bolingbroke. 
Then he recovers his principle by transferring his loyalty 
to Bolingbroke. In a word, he is a very old man, and his 
words and acts are carefully studied from weak old age. 
The sketch may well be contrasted with that of Gaunt, 
who is as old a man, but who has not lost his will, his 
power, or his courage. He stays but a short time, only 
in two scenes, but we see him as if he were alive before 
us ; one of the old school of Edward in. ; chivalrous, 
honourable, fit for the works and the trials of war, 
as fit as Richard was unfit for them ; of deep ex- 
perience in life, yet tender; rigid in justice even to 
blaming the King; honouring his own caste, yet loving 
the people; knowing his duties to them and pressing 
those duties on the King; loving his son, yet loving 
England more. Old and with the trembling angers of 
age, as well as its sorrows ; old and dying, but never 
truer, more valiant, more patriotic, and more sorrowful 
than in death. 

As we stand by his deathbed, we see the trouble of 
the land and presage the doom of Richard. It is part 
of Shakespeare's preparation for his catastrophe. That 
preparation has already begun in the first scene of the 
first act. The murder of Gloucester, Richard's uncle, 
underlies the challenges of Mowbray and Bolingbroke, 
and also the policy of Richard towards the challengers. 
That murder was planned by Richard and executed by 
Mowbray before the play begins. It is now Richard's 
policy to exile his tool Mowbray, and then to exile Boling- 
broke. He gets rid of his accomplice in the murder, and 
also of the man whom he suspects as its avenger. Boling- 
broke, when he challenges Mowbray, has really attacked 
Richard for the murder, and the King fears for his crown. 
This fear is deepened by Bolingbroke's courtship of the 
common people. 



80 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

How he did seem to dive into their hearts 

With humble and familiar courtesy, 

What reverence he did throw away on slaves, 

Wooing poor craftsmen with the craft of smiles 

And patient underbearing of his fortune, 

As 'twere to banish their affects with him. 

Off goes his bonnet to an oyster-wench ; 

A brace of draymen bid God speed him well, 

And had the tribute of his supple knee, 

With ' Thanks, my countrymen, my loving friends ' ; 

As were our England in reversion his, 

And he our subjects' next degree in hope. 

It is a fine sketch of an ambitious politician, as fine as 
that of Absalom in the Book of Samuel ; and the sketch 
is as admirably finished on the same lines in the rest 
of the play. 

The first and third scenes, with all the pomp and 
circumstance of court, and tournament, and procession 
— artistic delight in which is part of the character of 
Richard — are one long preparation, not only for the 
overthrow of the King and his death, but seem by their 
length to be the stately introduction to a greater drama 
than this single play ; to the vast drama of which I have 
spoken which culminates in the doom of Richard in. and 
the pacification of tortured England under Henry vn. 

Every one has said that Richard is a study of weakness 
of character. But the study is much more complicated 
than that easy statement would infer. The character of 
Richard, as freshly conceived by Shakespeare, is origin- 
ally gentle, good because untempted, imaginative, loving. 
He is a fantastic, careless dilletant of life, luxurious by 
nature, easily excited, easily depressed, weak of will, of 
conscience, and of reason. As long as he was in a 
private gentleman's position, and when he first was King, 
before he fell into the hands of flatterers and luxury, his 
character was inoffensive, nay more, full of easy charm 
and poetic sensibility; his weakness did then no harm; 



RICHARD II 81 

Ms vanity amused but did not injure the state; his 
slight touch of wild genius made him loveable. He is 
the Queen's 'sweet Richard,' her 'sweet guest.' But 
when he becomes a king, he is tempted by power he 
thinks irresponsible, and by a horde of parasites who 
play on his idea of himself and his position till he thinks 
he is lord of the world. And then, his love of luxury, 
his weakness and light vanity make him their victims. 
All his good qualities, for the time, are overwhelmed. 

Vanity with a strong character does not destroy good 
sense or clear sight of affairs, but combined with a weak 
character and a luxurious life, it rots away, 'insatiate 
cormorant,' the sense which handles daily life, preys upon 
itself, and blinds its victim's eyes to events and men. 
It is no wonder, then, that Richard, now made vain, 
weak, luxurious — a king, as he thinks, by the decree of 
God Himself — should be blind to the danger of exiling 
Bolingbroke and to the strength of Bolingbroke. Shake- 
speare marks this total blindness, and while we feel, as we 
read, the folly in Richard of which it is the result, we also 
feel, as Shakespeare desires us to feel, the piteousness of it. 
It is impossible to see that lonely figure, ignorant that he 
has alienated every friend, starting for Ireland, without 
some dim compassion for his inevitable doom. Even in 
this far-off way Shakespeare prepares us for the pity we 
shall hereafter give him. 

But it is difficult to give him any pity now. For his 
' rash, fierce blaze of riot ' has made him insolent. That 
insolence against law and man and the gods, which the 
Greeks put into a doomed man, reaches a hateful height 
in Richard, and is the more hateful because he is young. 
It is shown when, consulting with Bagot and Green, he 
lightly says that he will farm all England out and give 
blank charters to his substitutes that they may wring 
gold from all classes, without one thought of the civic 



82 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

guilt and mortal danger of this act ; still more shown 
when, indignantly reproved by Gaunt for this iniquity, 
he violates the decencies of life by mocking and abusing 
a dying old man who is of as royal blood as himself; 
who is dignified by his age; whom he should honour 
as the stay of his kingdom; and to whom his pity is 
due because he has parted him from the son of his old 
age. His outburst of wrath at Gaunt's rebuke is vile. It 
is said, however, in anger, but his words before he goes to 
see Gaunt are said without passion, in the cold indiffer- 
ence which belongs to a lawless life, and they are viler 
still- 
Now, put it, God, in his physician's mind 
To help him to his grave immediately ! 

This insolence, rooted in the weakness he thinks strength, 
has neither courtesy, reverence, nor compassion. It is 
doubled, with an equal ignorance of the danger he incurs, 
when, with a breath, he seizes all the goods and revenues 
of which his uncle dies possessed, and disinherits Boling- 
broke. This is the insolence of a fool who thinks he can 
violate all civil and moral law with impunity, because he 
is a king. But above kings are the gods. 

And Shakespeare represents their action. York, 
Richard's best support, is shaken to the centre of his 
loyalty. In a noble speech he appeals to Richard not 
to be unworthy of his great ancestors, and Richard, 
blind and doomed, buoyed up by the luxurious insolence 
in him, only says — 

Why, uncle, what 's the matter ? 
York tells him that in seizing on Bolingbroke's succes- 
sion, he is endangering his own ; ' you pluck,' he says to 
the King, ' a thousand dangers on your head.' ' Think 
what you will,' cries Richard — 

we seize into our hands 
His plate, his goods, his money, and his lands. 



RICHARD II 83 

With that, he leaves for Ireland ; and Shakespeare ends 
the scene by deepening our sense of the loneliness of the 
King and of his certain doom, as we listen to the talk of 
the nobles — Northumberland, Ross, and Willoby — who 
are left on the stage. With such a king there is no 
certainty in property or law. He has attacked their 
whole Order in attacking one. Moreover, he has pilled 
the commons, and his flatterers devour, like caterpillars, 
the state. ' Let us go to Bolingbroke,' they cry, ' he will 
redeem the crown from pawn.' 

The next scene doubles the same impression. The 
Queen, in Shakespeare's mystic way, feels beforehand the 
coming trouble — 

Some unborn sorrow, ripe in fortune's womb, 
Is coming towards me, and my inward soul 
With nothing trembles ; at some thing it grieves 
More than with parting from my lord the King. 

And Shakespeare is so interested in this experience of 
presentiment, that he analyses it in a long conversation. 
Green breaks in on this quiet scene with the dreadful 
news of Bolingbroke's arrival, of all the great lords who 
have gathered to his standard. York follows, crying 
treason, but conscious of his inability to meet it. The 
weakness of his character, in which Shakespeare makes a 
fresh sketch of the weakness which is so great a part of 
his subject, appears in every speech. ' I know not what 
to do/ he cries. ' The King is my kinsman and my king. 
Bolingbroke is also my kinsman, and he is wronged. I am 
torn between them.' 

Then Bushy, Green, and Bagot, the king's flatterers, 
are left alone. They know their doom is at hand. They 
bid farewell; farewell for ever. All is over. The first 
division of the play is done. The rest is the working 
out of Richard's ruin. The reader sees the ruin as if 



84 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

it were already accomplished; and then, so vivid is its 
presentation, he also sees, in his mind's eye, the lonely 
figure of Richard, far away in Ireland, vaguely wandering ; 
who, unconscious of what he has done, is coming back to 
death ; scarcely one friend left in England, and the only 
lovers of his person flying for their lives ; York, his regent, 
wavering in loyalty, his queen in sad retirement — a blind 
pathetic figure on whom the shadow of fate lies dark and 
deep. Even when he is not on the stage his solitary figure 
thus dominates the play. 

In these early historical plays, Shakespeare, clinging too 
much to history, does not weave his characters so closely 
and so dramatically into one another as he does after- 
wards. Richard n. and Richard in. stand, for the most 
part, apart from and above the rest, and develop almost 
independently of the other characters. Nor are the 
secondary characters less isolated from the play of other 
characters upon them. In this play Bolingbroke is him- 
self alone, so is York, so is Northumberland, so is the 
Queen. Only Gaunt is inwoven with the others, in re- 
ciprocating thought and action. It seems as if Shake- 
speare at first felt, as he read his history, that the 
personal character of a king or a great noble was every- 
thing in those times ; that it made or marred a state. 
And he drew that fact into its conclusions in the two 
Richard plays. But, as he went on thinking, he felt that 
this could not be quite true. Men were not really so 
isolated from their fellows. Their character was not only 
developed by events, but by their clash with other men or 
women. And he changed his method. In Henry IV., in 
Henry V., in King John, and afterwards in the Roman 
history plays, the leading characters are closely influenced 
by, and inwoven with, other characters. And the result 
is that each character, unlike Richard u. or Richard in., 
becomes more various, more complex, more than it 



RICHARD II 85 

originally knew itself to be; not the impersonation of 
one passion, one vice, or one goodness, but also the 
presentation of the infinite variety which lies hid in 
each personality; of the unexpected elements which 
appear, to our surprise, in men and women whom we 
think we know, at the touch of new events, at the touch 
of other characters than their own. 

That was a great change in the dramatic development 
of Shakespeare as a writer of historical plays. I say of 
historical plays, because he had already reached this 
point in preceding plays not on historical subjects, as, 
for example, in Romeo and Juliet, where all the char- 
acters, down to the Nurse, so act and react on one 
another that fresh evolution continually takes place in 
each character. It was this which Shakespeare added 
to the historical plays which followed Richard II. and 
Richard III. The lonely dominance of a single character 
is no longer to be found, except, perhaps, but greatly 
modified, especially by his close relation to his mother, 
in Coriolanus. 

When we meet Richard next, on his return from Ire- 
land, he is a doomed man, brought face to face with the 
inevitable results of his folly. No change is wrought as 
yet in his conceit of kingship or in his weakness. But a 
twofold change has been wrought in him by the sorrow 
and dismay of the overthrow which has whirled him from 
the top to the bottom of the world. The first change is 
that the insolence, the rudeness, the riotous thoughtless- 
ness, the blindness and folly, which marked him in the 
first scenes, begin to vanish away. The real amiability, 
gentleness, sentimentality, affectionateness of the man 
appear — those qualities for which he was loved by the 
Queen and his friends. The 'sweet guest,' 'the sweet 
Richard/ of the Queen takes shape. We see what he 
would have been, had he never been a king, never been 



86 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

spoilt by the unlimited power which was too greatly 
charged with temptation for his native weakness to resist. 

This change is common in similar circumstances. But 
the second change is uncommon, and illustrates Shake- 
speare's desire to carry Richard's character into variety, 
to give it originality. He adds poetic passion to the King. 
The shock has awakened in Richard the imagination and 
passion which his comfortable luxury had kept in slumber. 
Yet, the weakness of his nature prevents the poetry Shake- 
speare has put into his mouth from being great. It is 
half-frenzied, crying like a lost child, wild with self-pity, 
loose and vagrant in thought, ineffectual with rage and 
pride ; but it is alive with images, with a constant stream 
of ideas, with rapid changes, and is frequently conducted 
by the logic of the imagination to a finished close, as in the 
passage on page 88. This is an amazing change from 
the Richard who presides over the duel, or stands by the 
deathbed of Gaunt, and it makes him profoundly interest- 
ing. We give him now the admiration and sympathy 
which we give to an imperfect genius, however weak may 
be his will. He is now outside the common herd of kings, 
and enters the royal realm of art; most like some wild 
poet who has a natural weakness of character which 
prevents excellence, and whom sore trouble of his own 
making besets ; out of which trouble he draws the subjects 
and the bewildered wailing of his verse. 

A third change, a moral change, is afterwards repre- 
sented — so full of ideas is Shakespeare, so attached to 
Richard's character. The poetic power of the King con- 
tinues to the end, but it loses its wildness, because his 
character loses its weakness. Shakespeare lifts, as we 
shall see, Richard's character above itself. But this moral 
change has not yet taken place, only the first two changes 
already mentioned. The King's weakness still remains, 
though his imagination has awakened. And one idea of 



RICHARD II 87 

his prideful past clings closely to him, till it is beaten out 

of him by successive blows — his sense of the divinity of 

kingship. ' England herself/ he cries, ' her very soil and 

flowers, her animals, her stones, must take their part 

against rebellion ' ; 

This earth shall have a feeling and these stones 
Prove armed soldiers, ere her native king 
Shall falter under foul rebellion's arms. 

Nay, God Himself is on the side of anointed kings — 

Not all the water in the rough rude sea 
Can wash the balm from an anointed king ; 
The breath of worldly men cannot depose 
The deputy elected by the Lord. 
For every man that Bolingbroke hath press'd 
To lift shrewd steel against our golden crown, 
God for his Richard hath in heavenly pay 
A glorious angeL 

So high he flies in the weakness of pride. The next 

moment, with equal weakness, he is hopeless; hearing 

from. Salisbury that his Welsh army has abandoned him. 

The next moment, spurred by Aumerle's reproach — 

Comfort, my liege, remember who you are ; 

he flies as high as before 

Awake, thou sluggard majesty ! Thou sleepest. 
Is not the king's name twenty thousand names ? 
Arm, arm, my name ! A puny subject strikes 
At thy great glory. Look not to the ground, 
Ye favourites of a king : are we not high ? 
High be our thoughts : 

Fine words, to which Sir Stephen Scroop brings news 
of dire calamity. Then Richard, plunged again into des- 
pondency, unloads his weakness in a flux of words. I 
quote them ; they prove that he has realised at last his 
folly in the past, his weakness in the present. They 
prove more — they prove that the imaginative poetic 
element, the dreamy sentiment of his real nature, has 
now taken command. He is henceforward the reflective 



88 LECTUEES ON SHAKESPEARE 

poet of many words; never the man of action, never 
the man with an aim, never Bolingbroke. 

Of comfort no man speak : 
Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs ; 
Make dust our paper, and with rainy eyes 
Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth ; 
Let 's choose executors and talk of wills : 
And yet not so— for what can we bequeath 
Save our deposed bodies to the ground ? 
Our lands, our lives, and all are Bolingbroke's, 
And nothing can we call our own but death, 
And that small model of the barren earth 
Which serves as paste and cover to our bones. 
For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground 
And tell sad stories of the death of kings : 
How some have been depos'd, some slain in war, 
Some haunted by the ghosts they have depos'd, 
Some poison'd by their wives, some sleeping kill'd ; 
All murder'd ; for within the hollow crown 
That rounds the mortal temples of a king 
Keeps Death his court, and there the antick sits, 
Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp ; 
Allowing him a breath, a little scene, 
To monarchise, be fear'd, and kill with looks, 
Infusing him with self and vain conceit 
As if this flesh which walls about our life 
Were brass impregnable ; and humour'd thus 
Comes at the last, and with a little pin 
Bores through his castle wall, and farewell king ! 
Cover your heads, and mock not flesh and blood 
With solemn reverence : throw away respect, 
Tradition, form, and ceremonious duty, 
For you have but mistook me all this while : 
I live with bread like you, feel want, 
Taste grief, need friends : subjected thus, 
How can you say to me I am a king ? 

Carlisle, Aumerle, urge him to deeds on hearing this. 
And he lifts his heart again. For the moment the ague- 
fit of fear is overblown. But, when he hears that his 
uncle York is gone over to the foe, it is the final blow. 
The up-and-down of his bewildered passion has passed 
away. Despair is now his only bedfellow. 

Over against this excited and wavering man is set the 



RICHARD II 89 

cool, steadfast man, with the single aim. Bolingbroke 
wins the day, but he is not the protagonist of the play. 
His presence, now that he is again brought face to face 
with Richard, is used by Shakespeare, not so much to 
display his character, as to expand the wild, feeble, senti- 
mental character of the King. 

We have met Bolingbroke twice before; in the scene 
between him and Mowbray, and in the scene where he 
is exiled. In the first he is loud-voiced, somewhat of 
a blusterer, without the politic courtesy of his after 
manners. But he may have exaggerated his attack on 
Mowbray in order to conceal from the crowd what his 
words really meant — a veiled attack on the King, through 
Mowbray, for the murder of Gloucester. Mowbray blusters 
also, but it is the bluster of guilt, side-glancing also at the 
King, who has with him plotted the murder. 

In the second scene Bolingbroke is quite different, 
quite self-contained. He speaks to the King whom he 
despises with covert sarcasm. At heart he is vengeful for 
Gloucester's death, angry with himself, sorry for his father, 
indignant with the King's treatment of England — but 
nothing of these passions appears without. The needs 
of the hour control his soul ; and his thirst for power is 
curbed into waiting. He is content to believe in himself 
and his fate. Exiled, he knows he will return, though 
exile galls him to the core. He listens quietly to his 
father who, out of his long experience, and in the cold- 
ness of old age, tries to convince him that exile is nothing 
to the philosophic man — ' Think you are not exiled, and you 
are not.' But Bolingbroke, as unimaginative as Richard 
is imaginative, who knows what he is, where he is, and 
what he means, with absolute clearness, disperses the old 
man's unreality. Exile not exile by thinking it is not ! 

O ! who can hold a fire in his hand 
By thinking on the frosty Caucasus 1 



90 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

Or cloy the hungry edge of appetite 
By bare imagination of a feast ? 
Or wallow naked in December snow 
By thinking on fantastic summer's heat ? 
0, no ! the apprehension of the good 
Gives but the greater feeling to the worse. 

A full revelation of his practical, clear-sighted, steady 
character. 'Let me come home to plain fact,' it seems 
to say ; and then we know that Richard, who never sees 
the facts around him, will be broken to pieces when he 
meets Bolingbroke. 1 

He meets him now. Bolingbroke, playing his politic 
game, making no step forward till he has secured his 
last, luring by a gracious humility Northumberland, York, 
Percy, to his side, all things to all men, hiding his deter- 
mined aim to gain the crown, sends a humble message to 
Richard. ' On both my knees I kiss King Richard's hand. 
Only to win back my lands, to reverse my banishment am 
I come.' Yet, in the midst of these meek words, a certain 
fury once breaks out, born of the wrath and fixed purpose 
that he hides beneath them — a subtle touch of Shake- 
speare's — 

If not, I '11 use the advantage of my power, 

And lay the summer's dust with showers of blood 

Bain'd from the wounds of slaughter'd Englishmen. 

Northumberland bears this message to the King upon 
the castle wall. Shakespeare, to lift us into pity, makes 
Richard look like a king ; his eye, like an eagle's, ' lightens 
forth controlling majesty'; and this pity gathers closely 

1 It is worth saying that Shakespeare makes the patriotism of the 
father descend to the son. Bolingbroke ends the scene in this way — 

Then, England's ground, farewell ; sweet soil adieu ; 
My mother, and my nurse, that bears me yet ! 

Nor is Richard less fond of his country. When he lands from Ireland he 
cries — 

I weep for joy 

To stand upon my kingdom once again ; 

Dear earth, I do salute thee with my hand. 



RICHARD II 91 

round him from this moment; accompanies him to 
London, to Pomfret, to his death. We forgive the past 
for the sake of the piteous present. Insolent majesty we 
resented, but compassion waits on ruined majesty. 

What is most pathetic in the castle scene is the in- 
ability of its passion. Richard unlades his heart in fluent 
feebleness till we are touched with contempt. But the 
contempt is lessened by the imagination in his words. 
How sensitive they are, every tense nerve thrilling through 
them ; how full of pitiful, half- frantic poetry ! He stands 
at first on his divine right as king. God omnipotent will 
be his avenger; then he cries that his England will be 
devastated; her maid-pale peace be changed to scarlet 
indignation — and in the prophecy Shakespeare means us 
to presage the Civil Wars which Henry's usurpation will 
begin. From this high cry he falls, bending to Boling- 
broke's desire, and, having yielded, regrets his shame 
with bitter passion— 

God ! O God ! that e'er this tongue of mine, 
That laid the sentence of dread banishment 
On yond proud man, should take it off again 
With words of sooth. ! that I were as great 
As is my grief, or lesser than my name, 

Or that I could forget what I have been, 
Or not remember what I must be now. 
Swell'st thou, proud heart ? 

He sees Bolingbroke draw near, and the wild, imaginative 
self-pity, indignation, and fear of what will be, breaks into 
a storm of self-revealing words — 

What must the king do now ? Must he submit ? 
The king shall do it : must he be depos'd ? 
The king shall be contented : must he lose 
The name of king 1 o' God's name, let it go : 

1 '11 give my jewels for a set of beads, 
My gorgeous palace for a hermitage, 
My gay apparel for an almsman's gown, 
My figur'd goblets for a dish of wood, 
My sceptre for a palmer's walking-staff, 



92 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

My subjects for a pair of carved saints, 

And my large kingdom for a little grave, 

A little little grave, an obscure grave ; 

Or I '11 be buried in the king's highway, 

Some way of common trade, where subjects' feet 

May hourly trample on their sovereign's head ; 

For on my heart they tread now whilst I live ; 

And buried once, why not upon my head ? 

Aumerle, thou weep'st, my tender-hearted cousin ! 

We '11 make foul weather with despised tears ; 

Our sighs and they shall lodge the summer corn, 

And make a dearth in this revolting land. 

Or shall we play the wantons with our woes, 

And make some pretty match with shedding tears ? 

As thus ; to drop them still upon one place, 

Till they have fretted us a pair of graves 

Within the earth ; and, therein laid : ' There lies 

Two kinsmen digged their graves with weeping eyes.' 

Would not this ill do well ? Well, well, I see 

I talk but idly and you laugh at me. 

Exhausted by this ebb and flow of passion, but having 
freed his soul by it, he meets Bolingbroke with the dignity 
a doomed man borrows from the belief that all is over, 
with the sarcasm and the courage which are born in a 
weak man when he feels that the worst has come; and 
passes, at Bolingbroke's command, to London. 

This to and fro of excitement and depression, soaring 
and sinking, — and behind it Richard's amazed self-pity, 
and behind that, our deep pity felt through Shakespeare's 
pity for one so inevitably mauled by moral law, touched 
too into sombre colour by our half-contempt for him, and 
into wild, delicate, sunset colour by our sympathy with 
his fantastic imagination — are, in this wonderful series 
of passages, as penetrating, as pathetic as any in the work 
of Shakespeare. 

The act ends with that gentle scene in the Duke of 

York's garden, where the Queen and her ladies come to 

breathe the air. It is Shakespeare's dramatic way, after 

the turmoil and the tempest, to place us in a quiet place, 

> and in quiet thought. It is, he thinks, the way of human 



RICHARD II 93 

life to do so with us. But he does not leave in it his sub- 
ject. Rather, he resumes the whole of the previous action 
of the play, and anticipates its close, in the allegory the 
gardener makes. The garden is England. The gardener 
is the King ; the fruit-trees are the nobles; the herbs and 
flowers the people ; and the weeds and caterpillars those 
who devour the state. The gardener and his aids, in their 
walled quiet, discuss what is good government, and what 
is not ; that is, they discuss that which forms one of the 
underlying motives of the play itself, and of the whole 
series of plays down to the close of Richard III. And 
admirably it is done. The serious, philosophic talk of 
the gardener is set with natural art between the pretty 
interchange of thought of the Queen and her ladies and 
the sorrowful break from her ambuscade of the Queen 
when she hears the gardener blame the King — 

! I am press'd to death through want of speaking. 
What, thought Shakespeare, are kings and queens and 
the quarrels of great nobles to this honest quiet workman 
who does with vital interest the work he enjoys, who has 
no foolish resentment against the great folk, even when 
they abuse him ! Nothing but pity stirs his heart. 1 With 
a delicate sympathy for the Queen and the woman, with 
the reflective sentiment of one who lives far away from 
the world, he plants in her memory a bed of herbs whose 
nature will recall her sorrow and her fate. The lines are 
exquisitely fitted to the case, the scene, and the man — 

Poor queen ! so that thy state might he no worse, 
I would my skill were subject to thy curse. 
Here did she fall a tear ; here, in this place, 
I '11 set a bank of rue, sour herb of grace ; 
Rue, even for ruth, here shortly shall be seen, 
In the remembrance of a weeping queen. 

1 It would be well to compare this passage with the scene in Sir Walter 
Scott's Abbot between Mary of Scotland and the gardener of Blinkhoolie, 
who has been, in old days, the Abbot of St. Mary's. The one is as much 
a piece of genius as the other. 



94 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

The scene at the beginning of the fourth act in 
Westminster Hall seems needless, a drag on the move- 
ment of the play. The only excuses I can find for it 
are, first, that it forms an introduction to the entrance 
of King Richard who is the centre of interest ; and 
secondly, that it reveals those elements of disturbance, 
lying underneath the seeming peace of the usurpation, 
which in the succeeding plays bring about the Civil 
Wars. It is filled with the violent quarrels and fierce 
speech of hot-headed nobles. We anticipate, as we 
hear them, rebellion and battle. And this anticipation is 
enforced by the Bishop of Carlisle, who, indignant at 
Richard's deposition as violating the divine right of 
kings, foretells the Civil Wars in a speech which is 
remembered in Henry IV., when the king draws near to 
death. The deposition of Richard is the source of the 
doom that overshadows the following plays. If you crown 
Bolingbroke, says the Bishop — 

let me prophesy, 
The blood of English shall manure the ground 
And future ages groan for this foul act ; 
Peace shall go sleep with Turks and infidels, 
And in this seat of peace tumultuous wars 
Shall kin with kin and kind with kind confound ; 
Disorder, horror, fear and mutiny 
Shall here inhabit, and this land be call'd 
The field of Golgotha and dead men's skulls. 
O ! if you raise this house against this house, 
It will the woefullest division prove 
That ever fell upon this cursed earth. 
Prevent it, resist it, let it not be so, 
Lest child, child's children cry against you ' woe ! ' 

It is a passage which suggests that Shakespeare had 
already conceived the whole series as one drama. 

Then the King enters. Shakespeare has evidently 
spent so much trouble over this scene that he has over- 
done his work. He has introduced that spectacular 
scene with the mirror which is quite unnecessary, which 



RICHARD TT 95 

sins against the ' Not too much,' and which, worst of all, 
not only lowers our pity for Richard because it exhibits 
his theatrical folly in public, but also degrades the char- 
acter of Bolingbroke below the level it keeps in the rest of 
the play. In permitting this antic of Richard, Boling- 
broke lays him open to a cruel mockery which his terrible 
sorrow neither deserves nor ought to have. I wonder 
Shakespeare's exquisite delicacy towards human nature 
could have permitted it. Nor is it the only stain on the 
scene. Shakespeare should have felt that Northumber- 
land's demand that the king, round whom the compas- 
sion of all gentle folk should gather, must read out, 
and sign the record of, all his crimes and follies, was a 
brutal demand. It is also needless for the dramatic 
action, and, if it be done to increase the pity for Richard 
which ought to preside over the scene, is a clumsy way 
of doing this. There is pity enough. It needs no false 
heightening. There is more of pathos in this short phrase 
of Richard's than in all these tricks (from whatever source 
they were borrowed) to make it keener, 

Bol. I thought you had been willing to resign. 
K. Rich. My crown, I am ; but still my griefs are mine. 
You may my glories and my state depose, 
But not my griefs ; still am I king of those. 

It is enough. The words with which afterwards 
Richard pours out his anger, his misery, are weaker than 
these. He is, throughout the scene, like a wild animal 
trapped in the wood, and crying in the night, while the 
free beasts pass him by and mock at his distress. The 
scene is piteous; yet we may wish it had been shorter, 
and less sensational. 

The fifth act now begins, and closes all. The last 
stroke of fate falls on the King ; and his death is the first 
stroke of a new fate which broods over Bolingbroke, and 
the work of which is wrought out through the two parts 



96 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

of Henry IV. The murder of Richard, the blood of every 

noble, slaughtered to clear the path of Boliugbroke to 

the throne, cry for vengeance. The dragon's seed is 

sown. It springs up finally into the armed men of the 

Civil War, when father slew the son and son the father. 

Richard, in the hour of his doom, sees the beginning 

of this and prophesies it to Northumberland. Again 

Shakespeare seems careful to prepare us for what is 

coming in Henry IV.; seems as if he already looked 

forward to the large design of which we have spoken. 

Northumberland, thou ladder wherewithal 

The mounting Bolingbroke ascends my throne, 

The time shall not be many hours of age 

More than it is, ere foul sin gathering head 

Shall break into corruption. Thou shalt think, 

Though he divide the realm and give thee half, 

It is too little, helping him to all ; 

And he shall think that thou, which know'st the way 

To plant unrightful kings, wilt know again, 

Being ne'er so little urg'd, another way 

To pluck him headlong from the usurped throne. 

The love of wicked friends converts to fear ; 

That fear to hate, and hate turns one or both 

To worthy danger, and deserved death. 

Another preparation for Henry IV. is also in this act 
(Sc. iii.). It is the short talk between Percy and Boling- 
broke about him who is the Prince of Wales in Henry 
IV. The dissolute, unthrifty, wanton boy who lives with 
Falstaff is sketched for us, and then his higher future 
in Henry V. ' I see,' says his father — 

As dissolute as desperate ; yet, through both, 

I see some sparkles of a better hope, which elder days 

May happily bring forth. 

I wonder, when I read these preparation passages, whether 
Shakespeare, who was so careful in his art, did not insert 
them in this play after he had written Henry IV. 

One word must be said about the second and third 
scenes, in which York plays so curious a part. The 



RICHARD II 97 

second is, of course, remarkable for the fine and well- 
known description of Bolingbroke riding into London. 
It serves to lift the figure of Richard into even a 
higher realm of pity. But the third, where York begs 
the death of his own son from the Bang, offends the 
natural instinct of the heart, and is one of the few 
examples of this in Shakespeare ; and though the scene, 
where Aumerle, York, and the Duchess rush one after 
another into the closet of the King, may be a good piece 
of stage effect, it is all the worse for that. It troubles 
with mere sensationalism the solemn atmosphere of fate 
which hangs over the death of Richard. 

We now come to the representation of Richard in this 
final act, which opens with his meeting the Queen on 
his way to the Tower. We read the scene, and are at 
first amazed. This is not the Richard whom we have 
known. He is all changed. Shakespeare, who has con- 
ceived Richard's original character as of good and loving 
stuff underneath his native weakness, the Queen's ' fair 
rose and map of honour,' the ' beauteous inn where no hard- 
favoured grief should lodge ' ; who had then represented 
his weakness as rising, through irresponsible power and 
luxury, over the goodness and love into vanity, blindness, 
and insolence; who had then, by terrible misfortune's 
siege, made him, while he retained his weakness, and 
indeed through his weakness, into the semblance of a 
fantastic poet, has now made a further change. He felt 
that Richard, since he was originally good, since he was 
betrayed by weakness of will but not by native vicious- 
ness into his faults, could not pass through so fierce a 
torrent of sorrow and misfortune without losing what was 
base and weak in him, and recovering whatever might be 
noble and strong. He is purged of his weakness. He is 
purged of his selfishness. He is purged of his blindness. 
He is purged of his insolentia. He speaks no longer with 



98 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

a flux of words. All he says is brief and clear. He sees 
with equal steadiness the past, the present, and the future. 
His love is no longer a feeble sentiment. The parting with 
his Queen is marked by strength and self-control deeply set 
in love, and with the wisdom of death in every word. He 
knows he is the victim of Fate, and he knows why — 

Join not with grief, fair woman, do not so, 
To make my end too sudden : learn, good soul, 
To think our former state a happy dream ; 
From which awak'd, the truth of what we are 
Shows us but this. I am sworn brother, sweet, 
To grim Necessity, and he and I 
Will keep a league till death. 

Can any words, any temper, be more unlike his previous 
words and temper ? He is quite clear as to what the 
Queen should do ; and sets her in the way to do it, 
briefly and fully. When the Queen, seeing he is changed, 
and mistaking his brave acceptance of the inevitable, 
urges him to fierceness : 

What ! is my Richard both in shape and mind 

Transform'd and weakened 1 Hath Bolingbroke deposed 

Thine intellect ? hath he been in thy heart ? 

The Hon dying thrusteth forth his paw 

And wounds the earth, if nothing else, with rage 

To be o'erpowered ; 

he answers, out of the grave atmosphere of death which 
wraps him so closely, in quiet words, full of peace and 
beauty. All that was weak and foolish has passed away, 
but his lovingness is deepened by the change. His parting 
words are lovely with tenderness and sweet remembrance. 
Nor does Shakespeare, in that last scene in the 
dungeon, where the murder is wrought, make him lower 
than this. His long soliloquy is not only descriptive of 
the place where he sits — Shakespeare never omits to 
paint for the intellectual eye his scenery — it is, in its 
gentle philosophy, its sensitive ear, its poetic sym- 
bolism, its love of music, and its kindly irony, not un- 



RICHARD II 99 

worthy of a man, and of a man in the very shadow of 

death ; and its close is beautiful with pathetic and lonely 

passion. The music which at first he loved, now maddens 

him ; he bids it cease — yet — 

Yet blessing on his heart that gives it me ! 
For 'tis a sign of love, and love to Richard 
Is a strange brooch in this all-hating world. 

The tender, pathetic cry of this is deepened when, on 

a sudden, the groom enters and tells how his heart 

yearned when he saw Bolingbroke ride on roan Barbary, 

Richard's favourite — 

Rode he on Barbary ? Tell me, gentle friend, 
How went he under him ? 

It is only Shakespeare and Walter Scott who are capable 
of these divine things. At this, and while Richard is lost 
in recollection, the murderers break in, and all is over. 
Richard dies sword in hand, 

As full of valour as of royal blood. 

The work of justice is done; the punishment of ill 

government exacted ; the fatal result of weakness, when 

strength was needed, reached ; and pity alone remains, 

and the sorrowful tale to move the hearts of men. 

Richard himself bequeaths that legacy; and no better 

close can be given to all we have passed through than 

his own words, as lovely as they are sad and grave — 

Good sometime queen, prepare thee hence for France, 

Think I am dead, and that even here thou tak'st, 

As from my death-bed, my last living leave. 

In winter's tedious nights sit by the fire 

With good old folks, and let them tell thee tales 

Of woeful ages, long ago betid : 

And ere thou bid good-night, to quit their grief, 

Tell thou the lamentable tale of me, 

And send the hearers weeping to their beds : 

For why the senseless brands will sympathise 

The heavy accent of thy moving tongue, 

And in compassion weep the fire out ; 

And some will mourn in ashes, some coal-black, 

For the deposing of a rightful king. 



IV 

BICHABD III 

Richard III. completes the vast drama, carried on 
through eight plays, which was begun in Richard II. 
It is, as it were, the fifth act, the winding up of the 
varied threads of the action of ninety years, the coming 
home to roost of all their curses, hatreds, and crimes, the 
accomplishment of the work of avenging Justice, and, in 
Richmond's victory, the initiation of a new England, 
purged from guilt. 

In Richard III., then, the long tragedy is closed. It 
brings to death those who, having torn the heart out of 
their country, have tried to govern England for their own 
advance, and sacrificed to that the welfare of the people. 
Richard's figure embodies all the civil evil in himself. He 
is it, incarnate ; and he dominates the play. Over against 
him, and towering, is Margaret, who is the embodied 
Destiny of the play. Her worn and wasted figure hovers 
above it like a bird of doom. Her curse pervades its atmo- 
sphere and enters into all its action. One by one the 
guilty — Clarence, Hastings, Rivers, Vaughan, Buckingham, 
all save Richard ; one by one the innocent — the two 
boy-princes, Anne, Elizabeth, are forced to feel her 
presence in the hour they meet* their fate, and to re- 
cognise in her the impersonated vengeance of natural 
law in the quarrel which has defiled England with 
fraternal blood. Richard himself is made her avenger 
in his bloody passage to the throne, and having finished 
this work, he is himself destroyed by the evil he has 



RICHARD III 101 

done. Nothing can be finer than this knitting of all 
the avenging forces round the supernatural image of 
Margaret, who is herself the prophetess and the victim of 
Justice. It clasps all the persons and all the action of the 
play into unity. It incarnates the judgment of moral law. 
Within this main purpose of Justice working out the 
penalties due to those hatreds of great families which in 
their exercise injure the people — the conception which is 
at the back of Romeo and Juliet — is the final evolution of 
Richard's character and of his doom. When this play 
begins that character has been already fully formed. His 
long soliloquy in the third part of Henry VI. (Act III. Sc. ii.) 
is Shakespeare's sketch of what Richard is when the new 
drama opens. The passion at the root of him is, like 
Macbeth's, ambition for the crown, with tenfold more 
steadfastness in ambition than Macbeth possessed. Mac- 
beth's ambition does not deliberately premeditate the 
murder of Duncan. It may have occurred to him at 
intervals, but it is only a sudden opportunity which 
lures him into it. When he is in it, he debates the 
crime, hesitates, fears, thinks of his honour, is imagina- 
tive with dark superstition. None of these things touch 
Richard. He plots all his murders beforehand with a 
certain joy, with unblenching resolution. He has no 
hesitation, nor does he debate with his honour, conscience, 
fear, or affection. He condemns his brothers as well as his 
enemies. Every means to his aim is right. ' Would,' he 
cries, 'Edward were wasted, marrow, bones, and all/ 
and Clarence, Henry, and young Edward dead. They 
are in my way, they shall be cleared away. What other 
pleasure in the world but sovereignty is there for me ? 
Love ? Why, love forswore me in my mother's womb. 
Therefore ' I '11 make my heaven to dream upon the 
crown.' Shall I attain it with all those lives between it 
and me ? 



102 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

And I, like one lost in a thorny wood, 

That rents the thorns and is rent with the thorns, 

Seeking a way and straying from the way ; 

Not knowing how to find the open air, 

But toiling desperately to find it out, 

Torment myself to catch the English crown : 

And from that torment I will free myself, 

Or hew my way out with a bloody axe. 

Why, I can smile, and murder while I smile, 

And cry, ' Content,' to that which grieves my heart, 

And wet my cheeks with artificial tears, 

And frame my face to all occasions. 

I '11 drown more sailors than the mermaid shall ; 

I '11 slay more gazers than the basilisk ; 

I '11 play the orator as well as Nestor, 

Deceive more slily than Ulysses could, 

And, like a Sinon, take another Troy. 

I can add colours to the chameleon, 

Change shapes with Proteus for advantages, 

And set the murd'rous Machiavel to school. 

Can I do this, and cannot get a crown ? 

Tut ! were it further off, I '11 pluck it down. 

Fierce ambition, cold cunning, finished hypocrisy, ruth- 
less murder, conscienceless resolve — these are his powers. 
And he keeps his word. He stabs Prince Edward after 
the battle with a savage scoff — 

Sprawl'st thou ! take that, to end thine agony. 
When the others after Tewksbury are talking, he has 
ridden from the field to London, entered the Tower, and 
slain King Henry, mocking and rejoicing. And over the 
dead body of the King he plans the murder of his brother 
Clarence — 

Clarence, thy turn is next, and then the rest, 
Counting myself but bad till I be best. 

A masterful person whose iron will makes and leads 
events ! He is, on the contrary, the servant of Justice, 
and Shakespeare rarely did a closer piece of work than 
when, without any special insisting on this, he makes us 
conscious of it. Richard thinks he makes and guides the 
storm in which so many lives are shipwrecked. He is 



RICHARD III 103 

really the chief victim of the storm, driven from shoal 
to shoal, till he is wrecked inevitably. 

But the most remarkable thing in his character, as 
Shakespeare conceived it, is that he is devoid of the least 
emotion of love. Not one trace of it exists, and it places 
him outside of humanity. It is not the absence of con- 
science which is at the root of his evil. Of course, he 
who has no love has no true sense of right and wrong, 
and the absence of conscience in Richard is rooted in the 
absence of love in him. The source of all his crime is 
the unmodified presence of self alone. As he stabs Henry, 
he cries — 

Down, down to hell ; and say, I sent thee thither, 
I, that have neither pity, love, nor fear. 

This creation of a character absolutely devoid of love 
is deliberately done by Shakespeare. The Richard of the 
original play of Henry VI. is not without some power 
or grace of love. Ambition for the crown is also the 
leading element in this Richard's character; these lines 
which must be Marlowe's tell us that ; 

And, father, do but think 
How sweet a thing it is to wear a crown ; 
Within whose circuit is Elysium, 
And all that poets feign of bliss and joy. 

But such an ambition would not alone make him the 
monster he is in Richard III. — a man incapable of 
love. It does not : he feels a passionate grief when he 
thinks that his father is dead. He has no joy till he 
hears he is alive. His very revenge is coloured by love : 
it is the wrath of affection. What feeling of love this 
earlier Richard has is natural, wholly unlike the sem- 
blance of it which Shakespeare puts upon the lips of 
the Richard of this play, who himself mocks at the 
words of love which he uses. Nor do we see anything 



104 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

in the original Richard of the mask of hypocrisy 
our Richard wears ; nothing of the intellectual power, 
the mastery of guile, the love of guile for its own sake, 
the chuckling pleasure in his cunning, the deliberate 
contempt of God and man, the deliberate self- contempt, 
the deep scorn of women because they loved, the piti- 
lessness, the self-isolation — all of which Shakespeare has 
added to the Richard of this play; and none of which 
could have been so complete, so unmodified, if any touch 
of love had belonged to his character. 

This is a unique attempt in Shakespeare's work. 
Richard is entirely isolated by this absence of love from 
humanity. He is deprived even of a great number of 
the passions — all those which are derived from love or 
opposed to love. Richard has no good passions, but 
neither has he the evil passions of hatred, envy, or 
jealousy. Any passion that he has — if the word passion 
may justly be applied to ambition — is the servant of his 
intellect. Of course, without love, and the qualities that 
depend on it, he has no conscience, no repentance, no 
fear of God. What seems at times remorse in him at 
the end is the agony of failure, is fury at the breaking 
down of his intellectual power. When a sense of the 
existence of conscience occurs to him, it intrudes in 
dreams only, not in real life. Awake, he passes from one 
crime to another without one touch of emotion, without 
one moment of morality. 

This separates him even from Iago, whose malignity is 
partly accounted for, who at least attempts to account for 
his curious, self-gratulating pleasure in torturing Othello 
by pretending jealousy. This also accounts for the un- 
hesitating swiftness with which crime follows crime in 
Richard's course, which otherwise would be unnatural. 
Macbeth before Duncan's murder is not half so rapid. 
The sense of honour which serves Macbeth for conscience 



RICHARD III 105 

makes him pause again and again before the murder, but 
Richard never hesitates. Old affections, admiration for 
Duncan's character, the chieftain's sense of honour, hinder 
Macbeth's quickness in guilt. Macbeth has some love in 
his heart ; he loves his wife ; he would not have murdered 
Clarence nor rejoiced when Edward died. He was natur- 
ally full of the milk of human-kindness of which Richard 
had not one drop. When he acts swiftly, and he is hurried 
by his love for his wife as well as by his ambition, his 
haste is lest his sense of honour, of which he is always 
conscious, should get the better of him. It is only when 
he has realised that honour is irrevocably violated that he 
becomes the reckless murderer. Guilt is not his natural 
element, because he is not mere intellect unbalanced by 
any affection. One with Richard in ambition, he differs 
from him by the presence of love in his nature. Richard 
is loveless intellect, ambitious of unchallenged power — 
absolute self with cunning — an awful solitary. 

Shakespeare felt obliged to account for this super- 
natural devilry in man; and he does so by making 
Richard a monster from his mother's womb. 

At his birth Nature rebelled ; 

The owl shriek' d at thy birth, an evil sign ; 

The night-crow cried, aboding luckless time ; 

Dogs howl'd, and hideous tempests shook down trees ! 

The raven rook'd her on the chimney's top, - 

And chattering pies in dismal discord sung. 

Thy mother felt more than a mother's pain, 

And yet brought forth less than a mother's hope ; 

To wit, an indigest deformed lump, 

Not like the fruit of such a goodly tree. 

And his mother confirms the tale when she lays her 
curse upon him. But Shakespeare does not think this 
enough to motive the unnaturalness of the character. 
Therefore he further dwells on Richard's belief that all 
the world hates him for his misshapen person, and tha> 



106 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

heaven — the only touch of religion in Richard — has 
made him in its anger ; 

Then, since the heavens have shap'd my body so, 

Let hell make crook' d my mind to answer it. 

I have no brother, I am like no brother : 

And this word ' love,' which grey-beards call divine, 

Be resident in men like one another 

And not in me : I am myself alone. 

' I am myself alone ' ; that is the keynote of Richard's 
character as conceived by Shakespeare ; intellect without 
love, like Goethe's Mephistopheles ; and by the absence 
of love outside of human nature. 

Be resident in men like one another, 
And not in me. 

It is this incapacity to even conceive love which makes 
him try to do things which would seem impossible to 
any one who loved. No other man could have wooed 
Lady Anne as he did, or asked Elizabeth for her daughter, 
yet both are not out of character in one who is wholly 
ignorant of love. 

What though I kill'd her husband and her father, 
The readiest way to make the wench amends 
Is to become her husband and her father ; 

is a speech incredible on the lips of any one who has 
ever loved. It is only when he has won Anne that he is 
astonished ; and in the astonishment a faint gleam of 
belief in the existence of moral right and wrong for 
others comes upon him. 'She has God/ he says, 'and 
her conscience against her.' But this only serves to 
make him proud of his own isolation in lovelessness from 
other men. His scorn of himself and of others, and the 
mixture of bitterness, pride, contempt, fierce self-know- 
ledge, and isolation in the long soliloquy which begins 

Was ever woman in this humour woo'd ? 

is a splendid example of the power by which Shake- 



RICHARD III 107 

speare felt and shared within himself a thousand 
others than himself, and even dared, as here, to paint 
the nature of one who was set aside by him from all 
mankind. 

This is followed by that masterly scene in the palace 
where Richard, the lord here of politic intellect, puts 
himself forward as ' the plain man,' and then as ' too soft 
and pitiful and childishly foolish for the world ' ; and so 
sets all his enemies at loggerheads, plays the interests 
and passions of each against those of the others, and 
makes use even of Margaret, the foe of all, to develop and 
win his schemes. His soulless cunning is triumphant, 
and he has a certain pleasure, even joy, in his devilment, 
such as we have in the unhindered exercise of any 
natural force we possess. In his case, however, the 
force exercised by absolute want of love is an unnatural 
force; and the result is — that the will and the intel- 
lectual cunning which exercise it are finally broken down. 
It is lovelessness which spoils his cunning, causes him 
to make mistakes, and finally destroys his aim. Again we 
get back to the root of his character ; hais self alone. 

The second idea of the drama comes in (Act. I. Sc. iii.) 
with the presence of Margaret, the incarnate Fury of the 
Civil Wars, who has been their incessant urger, and is 
now the Pythoness of their punishment. ' Small joy have 
I,' cries Elizabeth, 'in being England's queen.' And 
Margaret, her first entrance into the action, mutters from 
the background — 

And lessen'd be that small, God, I beseech him. 

She is a terrible figure, the Fate and Fury together of 
the play. She does nothing for its movement; she is 
outside of that. But she broods above its action, with 
hands outstretched in cursing. Worn, like 'a wrinkled 
witch,' her tongue edged with bitter fire, with all the 



108 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

venom of the Civil Wars bubbling in her heart; grey- 
haired, tall, with the habit of command, she has not 
been, like Richard, without love or exiled from human 
nature. But all she loved are dead. She has outlived 
humanity, and passed into an elemental Power, hopeless, 
pitiless, joyless save for the joy of vengeance. It is not 
till she finds the Duchess of York and Edward's queen 
sunk in their hopeless pain that she feels herself at one, 
even for a moment, with any human creature. She sits 
down and curses with them, but soon leaves them, as one 
removed ; towering over them as she flings back on them 
her parting curse, incensed that she has been even for that 
moment at one with their feeble wrath. Her eloquence 
is that of primeval sorrow and hate. Her curses have 
the intensity of an immortal's passion. 

' O, well skilled in curses,' cries the Queen Elizabeth, 
; teach me how to curse.' ' Life is her shame,' Margaret 
says, but she will not die till she has vengeance. Tis 
the only thing which brings a smile to her withered lips. 
And her vengeance is felt, like an actual presence in the 
air, by all who die. Shakespeare takes pains to mark 
that out. She is not only Margaret and hate to them, 
but the spirit though whom divine justice works its 
wrath upon them. And when she sees the end, she 
passes away, still alive, like one who cannot die ; departs 
in an awful joy — 

These English woes "will make me smile in France. 

Immediately after her first appearance, the curse and 
punishment begin to act. Richard is left alone on the 
stage, and the murderers of Clarence enter to receive his 
command to slay. These are the only persons in the 
play with whom Richard is at his ease. With murderers 
he drops his mask. He hails them as if they were 
comrades ; 



RICHARD III 109 

How now, my hardy, stout-resolred mates ! 
Are you now going to dispatch this thing 1 

I like you, lads ; about your business straight ; 
Go, go, dispatch. 

This murder fills the fourth scene. Shakespeare does 
not expose it unrelieved. He feels that the passion in 
the last scene has been too loud and furious, as indeed 
it has. He therefore lowers the note, and introduces, 
not to lessen but to deepen the tragedy, the wonderful 
piteousness, the wonderful beauty of the dream of 
Clarence. 

Nevertheless, he does not let loose his main conception. 
The murder is itself a crime, but it is also part of the 
great punishment, of the working out of the law that 
greed produces greed, and the sword the sword. Clarence 
confesses that his death is morally just. 

God ! if my deep prayers cannot appease thee, 
And thou wilt be aveng'd on my misdeeds, 
Yet execute thy wrath on me alone. 

Immediately, pat on the point, and done in Shake- 
speare's way of setting over against a grave thought 
the same thought in a grotesque or ghastly framework, 
there is now a parody, with a grim earnestness in it, of 
this same question of the vengeance of conscience. Is 
there that in us which punishes with thought ? Is there 
a wrath beyond ourselves ? an imperative command 
within us? If so, is it worth regarding? The mur- 
derers debate the question from their rude standpoint, 
and settle the matter as the robbing and murdering 
kings and nobles had settled it. They have a warrant 
for their crime; it is done on command. But these 
considerations are indifferent, of these conscience might 
get the better ; but the reward, the gain — that conquers 
conscience; and arguing to and fro with extraordinary 
variety of base and cunning thought and phrase, they 



110 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

end by attacking conscience as the most dangerous enemy 
of states and societies. 

Sec. Murd. 'Zounds ! he dies : I had forgot the reward. 

First Murd. Where's thy conscience now ? 

Sec. Murd. In the Duke of Gloucester's purse. 

I '11 not meddle with it ; it makes a man a coward ; a man cannot 
steal, but it accuseth him ; a man cannot swear, but it checks him ; a 
man cannot lie with his neighbour's wife, but it detects him ; 'tis a 
blushing, shamefast spirit, that mutinies in a man's bosom ; it fills one 
full of obstacles ; it made me once restore a purse of gold that I found ; 
it beggars any man that keeps it ; it is turned out of all towns and cities 
for a dangerous thing ; and every man that means to live well endeavours 
to trust to himself and live without it. 

This is exactly Richard's point of view, put coarsely. 
Yet these two are not as bad as Richard. They do feel 
the pull of conscience. He could not. 

The same elements of division appear in the second 
act. The hatreds of all parties underlie the hollow 
reconciliation at the deathbed of the King. Buckingham 
concentrates the falsehood of them all in his perjurous 
vow. By that falsehood, as a moral matter, his coming 
death is accounted for. But Shakespeare, though here in 
his sternest mood, awakens the pity of the audience by 
the form in which he casts Buckingham's oath. He 
prays for the very fate which falls upon him. Whenever 
Buckingham doth turn his hate (he speaks to the Queen) 
on you or yours 

God punish me 

With hate in those where I expect most love ! 

When I have most need to employ a friend, 

And most assured that he is a friend, 

Deep, hollow, treacherous, and full of guile, 

Be he unto me ! 

And so it falls out. The words make us think of Richard, 
and Shakespeare answers our thought. 'We only want 
Gloucester,' says the king, 

To make the blessed period of this peace. 



RICHARD III 111 

He enters, and flings into their false calm, like a shell, the 
news of the death of Clarence. 

Then, Clarence being the first, Edward is the second to 
feel the judgment which descends on those guilty of the 
blood of England. His conscience awakens, and he dies, 
feeling that God's justice is taking hold on men. 

It is characteristic of Shakespeare's work that the form 
of Edward's confession (recalling Clarence and. his kind- 
ness) throws back a new light of pity on the scene of 
Clarence's death, and keeps up the continuity of the 
dramatic action and the dramatic pity. And the pity is 
made almost terrible by the picture Edward's confession 
contains of the universal selfishness of the court, where 
not one has thought of Clarence, only of himself. 

My brother kill'd no man ; bis fault was tbougbt : 
And yet bis punisbnient was bitter deatb. 
Who sued to me for him ? Who, in my wrath, 
Kneel'd at my feet, and bade me be advis'd 1 
Who spoke of brotherhood 1 Who spoke of love ? 
Who told me how the poor soul did forsake 
The mighty Warwick, and did fight for me ? 
Who told me, in the field at Tewksbury, 
When Oxford had me clown, he rescu'd me, 
And said, ' Dear brother, five, and be a king ' % 
Who told me, when we both lay in the field 
Frozen almost to death, how he did lap me 
Even in his garments ; and did give himself, 
All thin and naked, to the numb cold night ? 
All this from my remembrance brutish wrath 
Sinfully pluck'd, and not a man of you 
Had so much grace to put it in my mind ! . . . 

The proudest of you all 
Have been beholding to him in his life, 
Yet none of you would once beg for his life. 
O G-od ! I fear thy justice will take hold 
On me and you and mine and yours for this. 
Come, Hastings, help me to my closet. ! poor Clarence ! 

Nor is the main scope of the play lost sight of in the 
next scene between the boys and their aunt and grandam 
— a quiet moment in this tempest of crime. The fate of 



112 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

the young princes is shadowed forth in the talk of their 

cousins. The fate which overglooms the play is heard 

in the grief of the women. The gloom is deepened when 

the Queen enters wailing her husband's death, and she 

and the Duchess (who, with Margaret, serve the uses, in 

some sort, of the Greek chorus) toss their sorrow to and 

fro with the children of Clarence, till the whole world 

seems full of weeping. Then Gloucester, sheathed in 

hypocrisy and mocking inwardly the sorrow he has 

caused, adds poignancy to the tragic pain the audience 

feels. 

The act ends with the arrest by Buckingham and 

Gloucester of the kinsmen of the Queen. ' Ah me,' she 

cries, ' I see the ruin of my house '; and then the Duchess, 

sick even to death of strife and slaughter, gathers together 

all the woes of the long quarrel as they have touched 

the house of York. 

Accursed and unquiet wrangling days, 
How many of you have mine eyes beheld ! 
My husband lost his life to get the crown, 
And often up and down my sons were toss'd, 
For me to joy and weep their gain and loss : 
And being seated, and domestic broils 
Clean over-blown, themselves, the conquerors, 
Make war upon themselves ; brother to brother, 
Blood to blood, self against self : ! preposterous 
And frantic outrage, end thy damned spleen ; 
Or let me die, to look on death no more. 

Amidst an astonishing variety of circumstance and 
character which the Greek dramatists would have re- 
pudiated as injurious to unity, the third act keeps 
close to the tragic development of the work of Justice. 
The audience knows what fate hangs over the princes 
on their arrival in London. It expects to have it pre- 
saged. And it is. Touch after touch, in their graceful 
prattle, awakes our pity. Some are even put into the 
mouth of Gloucester. The gallant bearing of the prince, 



RICHARD III 113 

Lis hopes to be a famous warrior like Caesar, while 
his murderer stands by; his misliking of the Tower; 
the light, peevish, innocent talk of York; his scoff at 
Gloucester's deformity ; the sudden overshadowing of his 
heart also when he hears of the Tower — all deepen the 
tragic darkness. And now Richard, having resolved on 
the murder of the princes, murders all who stand in the 
way of his design. Yet it is not he who really slays the 
new victims. It is avenging Justice, wading, as usual, 
to her conclusion through the blood of the innocent as 
well as of the guilty. Richard is her blind instrument. 
Rivers, Grey, Yaughan are now slain, the third, fourth, 
and fifth after Clarence and Edward who feel the sentence 
of conscience and the curse of Margaret. Their last words 
remember her. Next Hastings meets his unexpected 
fate. While he is talking of Gloucester's friendly face 
(Shakespeare is at home in these bitter contrasts of life) 
Gloucester breaks in suddenly, ' Off with his head.' ' He 's 
sudden, if a thing comes in his head,' said King Edward 
— and Hastings also sees Margaret as he dies. Richard 
slays them, but Justice holds his sword. 

The scenes which follow, where Richard is induced to 
accept the crown, as it were by force, and where he 
apparently persuades Elizabeth to give him her daughter, 
are weakened by their great length, and almost trench 
on farce. Richard between the two bishops, with the 
prayer-book in his hand, is ridiculous ; and the scene 
drags on without Shakespeare's crispness, clearness, or 
concentration of thought. It is a worse blot on the play 
than the scenes between Richard and Lady Anne, be- 
tween Richard and Elizabeth. Richard's dissimulation, 
in spite of the variety of the dramatic talk, seems in these 
scenes to pass the bounds of nature. Yet it is difficult 
to find just fault with Shakespeare. It may be that 
he desired to mark by their strained unnaturalness that 

H 



114 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

weakness in the intellect of Richard which arises from 
the absence of love in his character. Intellectual power, 
without love, grows abnormal, unbalanced, and weak 
through pride of itself. Nay more, Shakespeare felt that 
it would not only lose its power, but finally itself. It 
would be sure to make mistakes in dealing with mankind 
and with the movements of the world; to overdo its 
cunning ; to end like the plotting of Mephistopheles, in 
folly and failure. The common-sense of mankind has 
decided that long ago. In all folklore stories the Devil — 
intellect without love — is invariably made a hare of in 
the end. 

In the fourth act the coronation of Richard brings 
about the first movement towards his overthrow. Eliza- 
beth sends Dorset to Richmond, and we scent from afar 
the ruin of Richard ; and, like the rest, she, when antici- 
pating doom, remembers the curse of Margaret. 

As the speakers of this scene depart, they are standing 

in front of the Tower. Shakespeare, who always prepares 

his audience, does not let these sorrowful women leave 

the stage without hinting at the murder of the princes, 

and with an exquisite tenderness speaks — 

Stay yet, look back, with me unto the Tower. 
Pity, you ancient stones, those tender babes 
Whom envy hath immur'd within your walls, 
Eough cradle for such little pretty ones ! 
Kude ragged nurse, old sullen playfellow 
For tender princes, use my babies well. 
So foolish sorrow bids your stones farewell. 

Imagine that ! What a playwright was Shakespeare ! 
how effective for the stage is that farewell ! 

And now, in the next scene (Act iv. Sc. ii.), the dis- 
integration of Richard's intellectual power continues. 
Anne has already told how in sleep he is not able to 
beat back superstitious fear. Even his physical courage 
is then, as we see afterwards, in abeyance. 



RICHARD III 115 

For never yet one hour in his bed 

Did I enjoy the golden dew of sleep, 

But with his timorous dreams was still awak'd. 

Richard is represented by Shakespeare as without a 
soul, being without love. But this is when he is awake, 
and his will at the helm of his life. When he is asleep, 
Shakespeare, with his belief that in the far background 
of an evil nature the soul lives, but unknown, unbelieved 
in, by its possessor, shows how it awakens at night when 
the will sleeps, and does its work on the unconscious 
man. Then, and only then, conscience stirs in Richard. 
Then, and only then, fear besets him. The day-result of 
this work of the soul at night in Richard is plainly 
suggested in the dialogue. He is represented at all points 
as in a state of nervous strain of which he does not know 
the cause ; and this ignorance, irritating the intensity of 
his wrath with any obstacle, throws not only his intellect, 
as I have said above, but his management of men and 
events out of gear. His intellect is no longer clear, for his 
body is no longer sane. All his powers, even his hypo- 
crisy, are decaying. His doom has begun. 

Moreover, he now begins to feel the steady pull of 
the universe against immoderate crime. To escape this 
hitherto unknown terror he is driven, as it were by neces- 
sity, to add crime to crime. He proposes the death of 
the princes to Buckingham — ' I wish the bastards dead.' 
Buckingham retreats from this, with a courtier's words — 

Buck. Your grace may do your pleasure. 

K. Rich. Tut, tut ! thou art all ice, thy kindness freezes. 

And this hesitation dooms him — 

Cates. The King is angry : see, he gnaws his lip. 

K. Eich. I will converse with iron-witted fools 

And unrespective boys : none are for me 
That look into me with considerate eyes. 
High-reaching Buckingham grows circumspect. 

And when the princes are dead, Anne his wife shall die, 



116 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

and he will marry Elizabeth. ' Murder her brothers, and 

then marry her — uncertain way of gain.' 

This is the wild hurry of crime — Justice driving its 

victim — 

But I am in 
So far in blood, that sin will pluck on sin : 
Tear-falling pity dwells not in this eye. 

To double this guilty speed, the news comes of Rich- 
mond preparing a power, and the news abides, stings 
and irritates within him. Its inward insistence breaks 
out in short soliloquies, even when alone with Buckingham. 
The accomplished mask-wearer drops his mask; betrays 
himself. His self-control is giving way ; and with that, 
his intellect fails still more; fails so much that he is 
touched with superstition. He talks of prophecies — of 
warnings given by a bard of Ireland. All through this 
little scene with Buckingham (Act iv. Sc. ii.) he has lost 
his coolness of temper and his hypocrisy in irritability. 
His nerve is gone, like Macbeth's, but, also like Macbeth, 
his courage lives on. The affection is of the mind, not of 
the body. 

And now, just at the turn of things, when Richmond 
begins to increase and Richard to decrease, Margaret 
fitly appears for the last time, and at first alone, to 
concentrate their curse, and hers. Two splendid lines 
introduce the vengeful Queen. 

So, now prosperity begins to mellow 
And drop into the rotten mouth of death. 

To her enter the Queen Elizabeth and the Duchess 
of York ; and they join in the doom Margaret pronounces 
on Richard. Had Shakespeare written this scene with 
his matured power and concentration, it would have been 
a matchless scene. As it is, it is of an extraordinary 
force — mightily conceived and shaped. One after another, 
these three, whose darlings Richard has slain, sit down, 



RICHARD III 117 

ravished with sorrow, like three Fates, on the earth of 
England 'unlawfully made drunk with innocent blood.' 
Hooded, old, grey with grief, are Margaret and the Duchess; 
Elizabeth, though not yet old, is one with them in 
sorrow, a prey of time. Under the palace walls, all 
three, royal yet huddled in the dust, prophesy the wrath 
and the decrees of justice. They concentrate, not only 
the misery of their own grief, but all the woe of the Civil 
Wars, into their speech; and bring the whole weight of 
their sorrow and sin to a point in Richard, on whom 
falls their accumulated curse. Margaret rises above the 
others in the joy of revenge, and leaves them to their 
session on the earth, ' Forbear,' she cries to Elizabeth, 
who asks for help in cursing — 

Forbear to sleep the night, and fast the day ; 
Compare dead happiness with living woe ; 
Think that thy babes were fairer than they were, 
And he that slew them fouler than he is : 
Bettering thy loss makes the bad causer worse : 
Revolving this will teach thee how to curse. 

Their curse is deep, but it is deepened when Nature 
herself retreats before it, when it is stronger than 
motherhood. The scene closes when on Richard's head — 
who now, in fine dramatic contrast to this almost solitary 
scene, comes marching by with warlike sound and pomp 
on his way to overthrow Buckingham — falls his mother's 
curse. And the curse is a prophecy, as it were, of all 
his victims will say to him the night before Bosworth 
field. It is often Shakespeare's habit to anticipate in 
a short passage a scene which he means to give in full, 
a sketch of the picture to be completed ; 

Therefore, take with thee my most grievous curse, 
Which, in the day of battle, tire thee more 
Than all the complete armour that thou wear'st ! 
My prayers on the adverse party fight ; 



118 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

And there the little souls of Edward's children 
Whisper the spirits of thine enemies 
And promise them success and victory. 
Bloody thou art, bloody will be thy end ; 
Shame serves thy life and doth thy death attend. 

The scene with Elizabeth which follows is of that 
cunning which overreaches its aim. Richard thinks he 
has persuaded Elizabeth to give him her daughter — 

Relenting fool, and shallow changing woman ! 

But it is he who has been deceived, he whom the woman 

has played with. She pretends to consent, but is already 

in communication with Richmond, to whom she does give 

her daughter. From this point of view, which I think 

Shakespeare meant, 1 the unnaturalness of the scene (the 

far too great length of which is only excused by the 

impossible effort Richard makes) is modified; and the 

weakness which has come on Richard's intellect is more 

than suggested. All is breaking down in him ; his self- 
!i . . . . . 

jControl, his temper, intelligence, his clear sight of things, 

his foresight, his power to keep men and subdue them to 

his will. 

The art is excellent with which this is shown in 

Richard's talk with Catesby, Ratcliff, Stanley, and the 

messengers. He is no longer the calm, smooth, cautious, 

deliberate, unimpassioned politician, all his powers held 

in hand. He gives half-orders, and stops short, yet thinks 

he has fully given them, as with Catesby. He gives 

orders and withdraws them, suspicion darting into his 

mind, as with Ratcliff — 

K. Rich. Catesby, fly to the duke. 

Cates. I will, my lord, with all convenient haste. 

1 See Act iv. Sc. v. , where Stanley says to Sir Christopher Urswick 
Richmond's emissary — 

So, get thee gone, commend me to thy lord. 
Withal, say that the Queen hath heartily consented 
He should espouse Elizabeth her daughter. 



RICHARD III 119 

K. Rich. Ratcliff, come hither. Post to Salisbury : 

When thou com'st thither,— [To Catesbt] Dull, 
unmindful villain, 

Why stay'st thou here, and go'st not to the duke ? 
Cates. First, mighty liege, tell me your highness' pleasure, 

What from your Grace I shall deliver to him. 
K. Rich. ! true, good Catesby : bid him levy straight 

The greatest strength and power he can make, 

And meet me suddenly at Salisbury. 
Cates. I go. [Exit. 

Rat. What, may it please you, shall I do at Salisbury ? 

K. Rich. Why, what would'st thou do there before I go ? 
Rat. Your highness told me I should post before. 

[Enter Stanley. 
K. Rich. My mind is chang'd. 

He flies into a passion with Stanley, but in the end 

believes in him; yet Stanley is the only one of his 

followers who is deceiving him. Richmond's name makes 

him as fierce in words as Macbeth was when his doom 

had come. The nerve-storm is speaking. 

Stan. Richmond is on the seas. 

K. Rich. There let him sink and be the seas on him ! 

White- liver'd runagate ! What doth he there 1 

Speech after speech his fury increases. Messenger after 
messenger comes in with bad news. The third brings 
good tidings. Richard anticipates it as misfortune, and 
strikes him down — 

Out on ye, owls ! nothing but songs of death. 
The furies are upon him. 

The fifth act opens with the death of Buckingham. 
He also feels that divine justice has descended on him. 
His false oath has come home ; and, like the rest, he sees 
Margaret as he dies. 

' When he,' quoth she, ' shall split thy heart with sorrow, 
Remember Margaret was a prophetess.' 

And now all the interest centres around Richard. 
He has been used by Justice to punish the rest. His 



120 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

own doom (now that he is with himself in a terrible 
solitude) is close at hand. Richmond, who is here only 
a shadow, brings with him the just sentence of God. 

God and good angels fight on Richmond's side. 

But though justice is to be done, yet Shakespeare will 
not quite degrade Richard out of the sympathy of the 
audience. Action and its need have partly healed his 
fluttering temper. His native courage, his pride of birth, 
his natural joy in battle, have dispersed his dreams for 
a time. His orders are sharply, clearly given. He speaks 
again like a great commander, and he dies a soldier and 
a king. 

Shakespeare knew the relief which the crisis, having 
come, gives to a courageous man. He knew also that 
no amount of crime could do away with physical courage, 
or make a man forget that he was of high lineage, if that 
had ever been a power in his life. And it was deep in 
Richard : 

Our aery buildeth in the cedar's top, 

And dallies with the wind, and scorns the sun. 

Yet, neither courage nor pride are what they were. 

So, I am satisfied. Give me a bowl of wine : 

I have not that alacrity of spirit, 

Nor cheer of mind, that I was wont to have. 

The phrase prepares us for the well-known scene in 
which the courage of Richard when he is asleep trembles 
before the ghosts of all whom he has slain. It is equally 
prepared for by the prayer of Richmond for the help of 
God whose captain he accounts himself, the minister of 
whose chastisement he is. Night falls, and each ghost, 
rising one after another — Prince Edward, Henry vi., 
Clarence, Rivers, Grey, Vaughan, Hastings, the young 
Princes, Lady Anne, Buckingham — speaks to Richmond 



RICHARD III 121 

of victory, lays a curse on Richard. Each bids him 
' Despair and die.' 

In this, the predominant idea of the drama — the work- 
ing out into catastrophe of all the evil of the Civil Wars 
— is brought into full prominence, since Richard is the 
incarnation of that evil. The connected idea of the 
supremacy of justice in the course of the world is also 
brought out so forcibly that Richard, for one brief hour, 
recognises the lordship of conscience, though he argues 
that it ought to have none over him. The supernatural 
world can alone convince him of his guilt, and he fights 
against the conviction. It is only in the half-conscious 
state, between sleep and waking when one is scarcely 
one's self, that Richard gives way to conscience and to 
fear, and in that state speaks that wonderful soliloquy, 
which — if we take it as the confused utterances of a man 
who is half asleep and half awake, half in the supernatural 
terror of his dreams and half in his reaction from them, 
half himself, half not himself — is an amazing piece of 
subtle analysis, only not succeeding altogether because 
it was more difficult to shape in words than mortal man 
could manage. None but Shakespeare would even have 
tried to put it into form. 

K. Rich. Give me another horse ! bind up my wounds ! 
Have mercy, Jesu ! Soft ! I did but dream. 
O coward conscience, bow dost thou afflict me. 
Tbe bgbts burn blue. It is now dead midnight. 
Cold fearful drops stand on my trembling flesh. 
What ! do I fear myself ? there 's none else by : 
Richard loves Richard ; that is, I am I. 
Is there a murderer here 1 No. Yes ; I am : 
Then fly : what ! from myself ? Great reason why : 
Lest I revenge. What ! myself upon myself ? 
Alack ! I love myself. Wherefore 1 for any good 
That I myself have done unto myself ? 

! no : alas ! I rather hate myself 

For hateful deeds committed by myself. 

1 am a villain : Yet I lie ; I am not. 

Fool, of thyself speak well : fool, do not flatter. 



122 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

My conscience hath a thousand several tongues 
And every tongue brings in a several tale, 
And every tale condemns me for a villain. 
Perjury, perjury, in the high'st degree : 
Murder, stern murder, in the dir'st degree ; 
All several sins, all us'd in each degree 
Throng to the bar, crying all, ' Guilty ! guilty ! 
I shall despair. There is no creature loves me ; 
And if I die, no soul will pity me : 
Nay, wherefore should they, since that I myself 
Find in myself no pity to myself ? 
Methought the souls of all that I had murder d 
Came to my tent : and every one did threat 
To-morrow's vengeance on the head of Richard. 

On this Ratcliff breaks in and, for a minute or two, tne 
dream, lingering as dreams linger, still holds Richard in 
its grip. Then, fully awake, he shakes it off — 

By the apostle Paul, shadows to-night 
Have struck more terror to the soul of Richard 
Than can the substance of ten thousand soldiers, 
Armed in proof, and led by shallow Richmond. 

The momentary weakness of fear, the momentary belief in 
conscience, which, with all that guilt behind, might make 
him die ignobly, pass away. He scorns his dreams, he 
mocks at conscience. 

Go, gentlemen ; every man unto his charge : 
Let not our babbling dreams affright our souls ; 
Conscience is but a word that cowards use, 
Devis'd at first to keep the strong in awe : 
Our strong arms be our conscience, swords our law. 
March on, join bravely, let us to't pell mell ; 
If not to heaven, then hand in hand to hell. 

And his speech to his army is a masterpiece of bold 
mockery of the foe, and of appeal to the pride of England ; 
the words of a fighting partisan, of a king at bay. As 
we read it, we should sit in his soul, below the words. I 
wonder if Shakespeare meant the overstrain I seem to 
detect in it to express the hungry despair which so lately 
had clutched his heart, and which he strove by passionate 



RICHARD III 123 

words to beat under. He blufi's himself. It is impossible 
not to sympathise with his self-conquest and courage; 
and Shakespeare meant us to do so. Since justice is 
done, pity may steal in; and circumstance has made 
Richard its victim, as well as his own will. He goes to 
battle with a joyful courage, as to a banquet. Macbeth's 
courage was intermingled with the despondencies of crime 
and of loss of honour, for he had loved and sorrowed, and 
of old had resisted evil. Richard's courage has no tender- 
ness, no sense of violated honour to trouble it, for he has 
never loved. It has no despondency, no philosophising 
on life and death, when the crisis comes. There is a 
physical rapture in it. 

A thousand hearts are great within my bosom : 
Advance our standards ! set upon our foes ! 
Our ancient word of courage, fair Saint George, 
Inspire us with the spleen of fiery dragons ! 
Upon them ! Victory sits on our helms. 

But there is no victory for him — 

The day is ours, the bloody dog is dead. 

Yet, he perishes like a king, slaying five Richmonds in 
the throat of death. His death would be the death of 
despair, were he not greater than despair itself. The 
drama closes with that speech of Richmond's, in which 
the wrong, the fraternal slaughter, the misery of the 
Civil Wars are dwelt on, resumed, and absolved in the 
reconciliation of the white rose and the red, in the union 
of Richmond and Elizabeth — 

Smile, heaven, upon this fair conjunction, 
That long hath frown'd upon their enmity ! 

Justice has done her work ; and she retires, well pleased. 

In this play there is the same conception of an over- 
ruling Justice as we have found in Romeo and Juliet. 
Punishment, not arbitrary, but the direct consequence 



124 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

of crime against humanity, falls on all those who have 
caused the Civil Wars. This is clearly an artistic con- 
ception, and has its parallels in the Greek drama, as for 
example in the Seven against Thebes. 

As a dramatic subject, Richard III. did not afford 
sufficient opportunity for the representation of the mani- 
fold varieties of human life which now began to allure 
Shakespeare. It was confined within a limited set of 
people — kings, queens, the noblesse and their dependants 
— within their selfish quarrels and ambitions. And what 
a set they are ! And the women, if we exclude the Duchess 
of York, are nearly as bad as the men. Nor, with the 
exception of Richard and Margaret, is any one of them 
seriously intelligent or interesting. Shakespeare must 
have been tired of the odiousness of it all, tired even of 
his conception of Justice working out her law on states ; 
anxious to live among a brighter and more varied class of 
characters, and freely to develop them. 

Moreover he was, I think, weary of the limitations laid 
upon him by the close following of history. Of this last 
weariness he got rid, as I have said, in Henry IV. by 
entering into the life of the people. 1 I am not sure 
that he did not begin to break loose from both these 
limits by the writing of Richard II., where, while follow- 
ing the main lines of history, he develops out of his own 
imagination, and apart from history, the character of 
Richard after his return from Ireland. The Richard of 
the castle scenes and of the rest of the drama is not the 
Richard of history. He is Shakespeare's own, as complex 
in character as Richard in. is simple. It is this out- 

1 We may trace this desire to represent the people even in Richard III. 
The little sketch of the Scrivener, Act III. Sc. vi. , is done by a master- 
hand. We see and feel the man. The three citizens who meet and 
discuss the political situation in the second act belong to the honest, 
god-fearing, steadfast, commonplace burghers of London. Their talk is 
representative, yet each of them is quite distinct in character. 



RICHARD III 125 

break of Shakespeare's into pure invention which seems 
to suggest that Richard II. was written after Richard III. 
Richard n. has no ambition to be greater than he is. He 
desires to be let alone to enjoy himself. Richard ill. is 
ambition incarnate. The one has only one desire, the 
other has a hundred ; and the hundred desires make his 
character as complex as the other is simple. The one is 
devoid of love, and therefore devoid of imagination. The 
other has tenderness, pity, sweetness, and thoughtfulness, 
when he has gone through sorrow ; and because he loves 
and desires to love, he is capable of imagination. Shake- 
speare makes him more than capable of it. He gives it 
to him after his fall, and in his hands he becomes the 
shaper of poetry. 

Then, again, the character of Richard n. grows into 
nobility ; at every change he gains ; he is noblest before 
death ; but the character of Richard in. loses power day by 
day, loses even intellectual power, and he ends as only a 
royal bravo. There is also far more characterisation and 
invention in Richard II. than in Richard III, and I think 
this suggests at least that the former was written after the 
latter. Moreover, the characters who are of vital interest 
are much more numerous in Richard II, more vivid, 
more distinct, more complex. The Queen in Richard II. 
is only touched, yet she is alive and distinct, and so is the 
Duchess of Gloucester. Anne and the Duchess of York 
in Richard III are not clearly, though they are 
elaborately, drawn. In Richard II. Gaunt is extremely 
interesting; Old York and Bolingbroke, even Mowbray, 
are all clearly individualised; but Buckingham, Rivers, 
Hastings, and Grey in Richard HI. are not. The only 
creature, save Margaret and Richard, who is specialised 
into a greater vitality than the others in Richard III. is 
Clarence in the Tower before his death. 

The play itself is unequal, strangely unequal. Its con- 



126 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

duct wavers from excellence to mediocrity. The over- 
length of such scenes as that before the coronation, and 
that between Richard and Elizabeth, wearies an audience, 
and the first of these is not redeemed by brilliancy of 
thought or dramatic play. Shakespeare had not yet 
learned concentration or moderation. There is none of his 
plays in which one more regrets the Greek measure, and 
the Greek power to say enough and no more. 

Its finer poetry is of less impressiveness because it is 
the poetry of cursing — a matter somewhat naturally apart 
from beauty. And the cursing is too long to be intense, 
to have that closely knitted passion which lifts the curse 
into the world of art. Margaret rarely reaches that : Lear 
reaches it in a few sentences. Only one passage in the 
whole play rises into a splendour of poetry, so piteous and 
so beautiful that it will live for ever. It is the dream of 
Clarence. 



THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 

This play is made up of two separate stories woven to- 
gether by the dramatist, and with his finest stage-skill, 
intelligence, and passion. Both of them came down 
from ancient times. These are the story of the cruel 
Jew and his debtor, and the story of the heiress, her 
suitors, and the caskets. They seem to have had a kind 
of chemical affinity for one another, for it is said that 
they were combined in a lost play called The Jew, acted 
before 1579. The story of Antonio, Bassanio, the Jew, 
and the Lady of Belmont who rescues the debtor, Shake- 
speare found fully developed in Ser Giovanni Fiorentino's 
collection of Italian tales {It Pecorone), and followed its 
plot closely; adding to it the casket tale, which, in the 
midst of serious elements bordering on the tragic, intro- 
duces others of lightness, grace, charm, and love. Yet, 
in the lightness is a weighty strain of thought, made 
partly by the deep and steadfast qualities of Portia's 
womanhood, and partly by the greatness of the love 
between her and Bassanio. 

To enliven the drama with gaiety, three additions are 
made — first, the elopement and the characters of Lorenzo 
and Jessica ; secondly, the story of the rings which winds 
up the play ; and, thirdly, the humour of Launcelot Gobbo. 
These are so skilfully intertwined with the two main 
stories that they enhance their interest, seem to have been 
always part of them, and play in and out of them like gay 
and happy children among grown-up folk. 



128 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

What with these two stories combined, with two episodes 
added, and with a humorous element, one might expect 
some failure in their amalgamation by the dramatist ; but 
it is not so. The plotting of the play is admirable; its 
stage-management a triumph ; and the characters so 
relieve, excite, develop, act and react on each other, that 
there is not one hitch, one jar, in the play from end 
to end. It is a masterpiece in its own difficult kind of 
drama, and it has always kept the stage. 

The Merchant of Venice is an early play, probably 
written in 1596, before the tragedy of life had laid its 
heavy hand on the mind and heart of Shakespeare. Yet, 
early as it is, it is as mature in form, stage-craft, and 
execution as it is in thought. The art-development of 
Shakespeare's imagination was as quick in its movement 
as his intellect, and that seems about as quick a thing as 
this world has ever known. In a great artistic genius 
all the capacities have equal power and penetration; 
and the formative power, as here, does not fall below 
the conceiving power. And both are as various and 
distinctive in the making of the lesser, as they are in the 
making of the greater, characters in the play. Lorenzo, 
Nerissa, Bassanio, Jessica are as clearly presented as 
Shy lock and Portia and Antonio, and as self-harmonised. 

In its combination of the serious and the gay the 
drama is fully romantic. It is also romantic in its ming- 
ling of the two stories, in its being a delightful piece of 
story-telling, and in the freshness and frankness of its two 
love-stories of Portia and Bassanio, of Lorenzo and Jessica. 
But it is not romantic in its conciseness, nor is the 
story of the heiress, the suitors, and the caskets in itself 
romantic. It is rather an old folk- tale which has been 
variously wrought in various nations. But it is made 
romantic by the passionate love between Portia and Bas- 
sanio, and by the bold adventure Bassanio, when he is so 



THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 129 

poor, makes, for love's sake, to win his wife. Men may 
accuse him, he feels, of desiring the money of the heiress, 
but he does not care; he knows he desires her, and 
her alone. Moreover, Antonio's lavish friendship, will- 
ing to sacrifice not only wealth but life for Bassanio's 
love, is another motive common in the great stories of 
romance. And whenever, in modern fiction or drama, 
such a friendship lives between a grave man, bordering on 
old age, and a young, gay, affectionate, wild fellow, cap- 
able of better things, and nice in honour, it is as instinct 
with the spirit of romance as the Merchant of Venice is. 

Shakespeare has not yet passed out of his romantic, 
though he has begun his patriotic and historical, period. 
The romantic still overlaps the patriotic. The time 
came when he left it behind him, and entered the tragic 
darkness of mankind. Something of that tragedy is 
already here. The romance of the play is less prominent 
than the tragedy of life. The tragedy passes into happi- 
ness for all but Shylock, but the tragic also moves through 
our horror at the hatred and vengeance of Shylock; 
through our pity for his nation's fate, and for his own over- 
whelming ruin ; as well as through our pity for Antonio's 
loss and pain. But the element of romance steals into 
the tragic matter when a woman is made the dissolver 
of all the trouble, when Portia cuts the knot of Shylock's 
cruelty; and in still lighter fashion, when, in order to 
prove that she was the lawyer, she invents the episode 
of the rings, the gaiety of which relieves the seriousness 
of the judgment scene. 

Along with the romantic elements in the play, there 
are, as in Romeo and Juliet and in Midsummer Night's 
Dream, elements which belong to the Renaissance, now 
fully afloat in England. The drama is laid in Italy, 
whence the New Learning came, to which all the culti- 
vated class of young men who could afford it went to be 
i ' 



130 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

filled with the spirit of the classic life ; where they found 
education in art and scholarship, in law, in literary form, 
in stories and story-telling, in the finest poetry and in 
the knowledge of life. There too they drank deep of the 
spirit which filled them with an unappeasable desire to 
attempt every kind of art, of knowledge, of adventure ; to 
realise every kind of life — a spirit which ran through the 
whole of the Renaissance of that time, like blood through 
the veins of a man. 

Those who were by nature good brought back good 
from Italy ; those who were weak or wicked came back 
either exhausted or five times as wicked as before. This 
play is full of Renaissance characters. Salanio, Salarino, 
Gratiano are the full-blooded young men of the time. 
They feast and drink and sing, invent pageants, and fill 
the streets with jovial riot. They are pleasant attendants 
of Antonio, the rich merchant ; of Bassanio, the fine gentle- 
man of the period. Lorenzo is the gentler type, the half- 
scholar, the half-poet, who loves the classic tales and 
philosophy, and who lives on a higher level of character 
than the rest of the young men. Also, Jessica has heard 
the Greek and Latin stories ; and her charming talk with 
Lorenzo about the night and stars and music reveals the 
widespread culture of the time. Even Launcelot talks 
of 'the Fates and Destinies and such odd sayings, the 
Sisters Three, and such branches of learning.' 

Moreover, that Shakespeare shared in the trend of the 
Renaissance to philosophic disquisition, thickly sown with 
classical allusions, such as formed the amusement of the 
Academies in Florence and elsewhere, is proved by this 
play. The Prince of Morocco, and he of Aragon, indulge 
in such disquisitions over the caskets. Bassanio does the 
same, though his philosophising is saturated with his eager 
love. The whole scene might be a pleasant exercise of 
the wits in the Rucellai Gardens in Florence playing with 



THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 131 

different views of life. Portia is always a piece of a philo- 
sopher, full of gracious moralities, of wise thoughts of life 
and lore and service ; and her speech to Nerissa, or that 
to herself while Bassanio is choosing the casket, with its 
classic imager}- and its passionate wisdom, is instinct with 
the finest elements of the Renaissance. Of the same kind 
is the talk of Lorenzo about music, in which all the stars 
are quiring to the young-eyed cherubim, in harmonies 
that our muddy vesture of decay prevents our spirit 
hearing ; where love of music is the test of goodness in 
men, of gentleness in beasts. Pure Renaissance that ! 
pure Florentine ! 

And now we may think of the mise-en-scene, and of 
the clearness with which Shakespeare has realised the 
life of Venice and of the mainland. We see nothing 
of the beauty of the sea-city. Shakespeare had never 
seen it. But we get the atmosphere of its world- 
wide trade, of Venice as the Lady of the seas. Antonio 
is the merchant prince, loved of all who knew him, 
save of those whose usury he hinders. He neither lends 
nor borrows for advantage, but lives on the level of 
the ancient Roman honour. Such were the great lords 
of Venetian commerce in the noble days. All his ven- 
tures are at sea and all are large : ' his argosies, with 
portly sails, do overpeer the petty traffickers.' North, 
south, east, and west the Venice merchants drove their 
barks. Antonio has ships which do business with Mexico, 
England, the West Indies, India, Barbary, Tripolis, and 
Lisbon. So wide, Shakespeare felt, was the outgoing trade 
of Venice ; and no less wide did he make the inflowing 
of nations into her port. The suitors of Portia arrive 
from all parts of the world — from France, England, Saxony, 
Morocco, 

From the four corners of the world they come. 

This overshadowing commerce is then the point on which 



132 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

Shakespeare seizes, in an England now bidding for the 
commerce of the seas ; that is, he seeks, in order to give 
weight to his imaginative work, for historical reality. Then, 
he pictures the internal life of the city — the merchants 
congregated in the exchange and mart of Venice on the 
island of Rialto. We see the crowds, we hear the chaffer, 
and among the rest watch Shylock and Tubal creeping 
by ; the usurers, the hated Jews of the time. Then, too, 
in the talk of Salanio, Salarino, and Gratiano, the gossip 
of the exchange is brought to our ears. 

Another piece of historical reality is the way in which 
the unswerving constancy of Venetian law is dwelt on. 
The royal merchant must bend to the law, even when his 
adversary is a cruel Jew, whom every Christian abhors. 
The Duke himself cannot wrest the law to do a great right. 
Shylock rests on the law, on the sanctity in the law's eyes 
of his bond. The court is strict ; 

There is no power in Venice 
Can alter a decree established : 
'Twill be recorded for a precedent, 
And many an error by the same example 
Will rush into the state. It cannot be. 

Moreover, it is by process of rigid law that Shylock is 
disappointed of his revenge, and punished. All this is 
fully characteristic of Venice when she was great. Shake- 
speare knew it from the many English who in times 
past had done business with the merchants and state of 
Venice ; he grasped it and used it to give vitality to his 
play. 

One other piece of reality remains. At that time 
and afterwards, and even now in sad decay, there were 
on the mainland stately country-houses where the rich 
Venetians lived. They had noble gardens, and were 
adorned with art. Music, dancing, the joy of life, went 
to and fro among their rooms, and a crowd of followers 
filled them. Belmont is a good picture of one of them. 



THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 133 

We see the large reception-rooms, the host of retainers ; 
we hear the trumpets that herald the Princes; we are 
told of the great park and the gates. And the only 
description of natural beauty which we find in this play 
is of the night-scene in the gardens, when the moonlight 
sleeps on the bank, and in the soft stillness the musicians 
wake Diana with a hymn. This too is strict reality, yet 
it is romance — romance, instinct with love, and set over 
in the drama against the rigid law and eager commerce of 
the city of Venice. 

I have said that it was difficult to bring together two 
stories of so different a spirit as those of the Jew and 
Antonio on one side, of the caskets and Portia on the 
other. But once it was done, and with such superb skill, 
their interlocking adds a great charm of change and 
variety to the play. We are transferred, but not too 
often, from the heated atmosphere of a great town to the 
quiet of the country ; from trade, usury, and specula- 
tion to the affairs of love ; from the sadness of Antonio 
and the hatred of Shylock to the gaiety of Portia, to the 
mingled mercy and justice of her noble nature ; from the 
solemnity of the judgment-hall, where life and death are 
at strife, to the stillness of the starry night, and lovers 
in the garden for whom life is opening all its brightness. 
To and fro, in this fashion, like the earth's sphere, like 
life itself, we pass from sunshine to shadow, and from 
shade to sun. Love and hatred, cruelty and mercy, sorrow 
and joy, worth and villainy, age and youth, stern justice 
and soul-subduing pity, meanness and magnanimity, 
interchange their action and their passion in this play. 
Every character is alive from head to heel with intellect, 
emotion, and imagination. The ideal voice of poetry 
speaks always, but at the base of the idealising lies fact. 
Truth to the realities of life is the foundation on which 
Shakespeare builds the palace of the ideal. 



134 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

The play opens with the sadness of Antonio, striking 
the keynote of the tragic in the tale. It is perhaps the 
sadness of presentiment; presentiment of which Shake- 
speare was so fond ; which he so often, with his tendency 
to mysticism, introduced into his plays. Antonio does 
not know why he is so sad. He is yet to learn the reason. 
It is the shadow of the future moving towards him ; and 
Shakespeare wakens thus the curiosity and interest of his 
audience. It is not anxiety for his merchandise that 
makes Antonio sad. He denies that imputation. It is 
not the sadness of love. ' Fie, fie,' the dignified gentleman 
answers to that accusation. The sorrows and joys of love 
are both behind him. 

The causeless sadness wearies him, Antonio says. And 
it may be that Shakespeare wished to sketch in him the 
merchant, who, engaged for many years in large affairs 
of trade, feels weariness of this life steal upon him. 
It is not, then, the sadness which is the cause of his 
weariness; it is the weariness which makes the sadness. 
Antonio is tired of the world, and these words are full 
of that obscure disease — 

I hold the world but as the world, Gratiano ; 
A stage where every man must play a part, 
And mine a sad one. 

His cry is still stronger in the judgment-hall, but with 

more reason. The very pleadings of the court for mercy 

to him weary his impatience with life. Let me have done 

with living ; 

Most heartily I do beseech the court 
To give the judgment. 

I am a tainted wether of the flock, 
Meetest for death : the weakest kind of fruit 
Drops earliest to the ground ; and so let me : 
You cannot better be employ'd, Bassanio, 
Than to live still, and write mine epitaph. 

Nor is his farewell to Bassanio less charged with the 



THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 135 

apathy of life. With, this grey, melancholy middle-age is 
contrasted Gratiano, his dependant, but his friend; the 
embodiment of riotous youth, overflowing with life like 
a sapling in spring. He is too wild even for Bassanio, 
who begs him to tame his spirits before he goes to 
Belmont. Nay, answers Gratiano, ' but I bar to-night : 
you shall not gauge me by what we do to-night.' He 
cannot hold his tongue in the judgment-hall, and his 
outbreaks are in detestable taste. He speaks ' an infinite 
deal of nothing, more than any man in Venice.' Nerissa 
will tone him down a little, when he marries her. They 
are well matched. She also has a tongue of her own. 
But in spite of this gallop of speech over infinite nothings, 
Gratiano, in defence of himself, has plenty of good sense. 
Not one of the folk in this play is without the active 
intelligence of the New Learning. His view of the 
transiency of love is set forth admirably and in good 
poetry (Act n. Sc. vi.). His answer to Antonio's cry that 
his part on the world's stage is a sad one is full of that 
wisdom of youth which is so much wiser than the wisdom 
of a wearied age — 

Let me play the fool : 
With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come, 
And let my liver rather heat with wine 
Than my heart cool with mortifying groans. 
Why should a man, whose blood is warm within, 
Sit like his grandsire cut in alabaster 1 
Sleep when he wakes, and creep into the jaundice 
By being peevish ? I tell thee what, Antonio — 
I love thee, and it is my love that speaks — 
There are a sort of men whose visages 
Do cream and mantle like a standing pond, 
And do a wilful stillness entertain, 
With purpose to be dress'd in an opinion 
Of wisdom, gravity, profound conceit. 

But fish not, with this melancholy bait, 
For this fool-gudgeon, this opinion. 

This is the brimming note of idle youth. It jars the 



136 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

graver man, but men have no right to become as weary 
as Antonio. He owed this good manners to the world, to 
meet his troubles brightly. Yet he was a lover of men 
and was loved by them. Therefore, he had great consola- 
tion, and should have made more of it. He had magna- 
nimity, that rare possession. With it went a splendid 
generosity. He gave, even to the danger of his life. 
Wealth had not degraded his character. He lent his money 
without interest, and when he borrowed, 'twas 'not for 
his own advantage.' He kept his state, was lavish in it, 
yet without ostent. His flatterers and dependants speak 
freely to him. Neither Salanio nor Salarino can be called 
his parasites. He enjoys the enjoyment of others, though 
he is sad; and his love for Bassanio passes the love of 
woman. He is almost pleased to die for him — 

Say how I lov'd you, speak me fair in death ; 
And, when the tale is told, bid her be judge 
"Whether Bassanio had not once a love. 
Repent not you that you shall lose your friend, 
And he repents not that he pays your debt ; 
For if the Jew do cut but deep enough, 
I '11 pay it presently with all my heart. 

The friendship of such a man lifts Bassanio to a higher 
level in our eyes. Only at one point does Antonio jar 
upon us — in his intolerance of Shylock, which is carried 
beyond our sense of decency. He spits on him and spurns 
him, calls him dog, misbeliever, cut-throat, cur. But this 
is of the time at which he lived. It was the common 
usage ; and Antonio was not beyond his age. Moreover, 
a great part of it Shylock deserved. 

Opposite Antonio, at all points contrasted with him, 
Shylock is set. Mean, mercenary, ungenerous, ignoble 
in thought and deed, consumed with evil passions — he 
is the darkness to Antonio's light. They clash : in the 
struggle Antonio is, day by day, pressed down into 
misery; but when Shylock's evil is at the point of 
triumph, it is utterly overthrown. And there is the 



THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 137 

centre of the play. There the ancient contention of dark- 
ness and light, of summer and winter, of good and evil, 
the root of a million million shapes of art, is presented in 
another shape before us. 

Shylock is not only Shylock : he is the personification, 
in Shakespeare's intention, of the evil side of the Jewish 
nation. And, in Shakespeare's mind, the evil side was 
rooted in love of money. It was in the carelessness and 
contempt of gain for gain's sake that Antonio found the 
greatness of his character. It was in the sordid care for 
money that Shylock lost his soul. Out of this filthy 
desire were born hatred, malice, cruelty, revenge, and 
envy — envy of Antonio's greatness of mind, hatred of his 
generosity, revenge on him for his scorn of usury. At 
last, as greater serpents devour the less, these dreadful 
passions in him devour even the love of money. The 
offer of thrice his money does not tempt Shylock away 
from his revenge. The baser passion is despised in the 
kingdom of evil by the aristocrats of that kingdom, 
hatred and vengeance. It is only when Shylock knows 
that he cannot gratify them, that his love of money 
returns, and he leaves the court more ignoble than he 
was when he was feeding fat his grudge against Antonio. 

Shakespeare goes to the heart of Shylock in his first 
meeting with Antonio. 

Shy. What news on the Kialto 1 who is he comes here ? 

Bass. This is Signior Antonio. 

Shy. [aside]. How like a fawning publican he looks ! 
I hate him for he is a Christian ; 
But more for that in low simplicity- 
He lends out money gratis, and brings down 
The rate of usance here with us in Venice. 
If I can catch him once upon the hip, 
I will feed fat the ancient grudge I bear him. 
He hates our sacred nation, and he rails, 
Even there where merchants most do congregate, 
On me, my bargains, and my well-won thrilt, 
Which he calls interest. Cursed be my tribe, 
If I forgive him ! 



138 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

This hate and malice double and treble: these passions 
are always their own fuel. Moreover, they gather fuel 
from every circumstance, as love gathers love. The great 
passions scoop all the world into themselves. 

As on the Rialto, so in his home his soul is in his 
moneybags. His daughter cannot bear living with him. 
His servant thinks himself famished and runs away, like 
his daughter. He hates the feast he is bid to, but goes 
to feed on the prodigal Christian. He detests masques, 
pageants, music, and joy. Yet, he is sensitive enough to 
have presentiments, like Antonio. The spirit in a man is 
deeper than his character, and feels, in another dimension, 
by a consciousness beyond our tabernacle, what is coming. 
Such a spirit, thought Shakespeare, is even in the evil 
man. 'There is some ill,' cries Shy lock, 'a-brewing 
towards my rest.' 

By Jacob's staff I swear 
I have no mind of feasting forth to-night ; 

Then fresh circumstance — Jessica's flight with Lorenzo 
— doubles his rage. It is increased by her becoming 
a Christian, and still more by the loss of his money 
and jewels. This maddens his evil passions into fury. 
When serpents are hatching, the sand grows hot around 
them, hurries their growth, sharpens their poison. 

Sal. I never heard a passion so confus'd, 

So strange, outrageous, and so variable, 

As the dog Jew did utter in the streets : 

' My daughter ! my ducats ! my daughter ! 

Fled with a Christian ! my Christian ducats ! 

Justice ! the law ! my ducats, and my daughter ! 

And jewels ! two stones, two rich and precious stones, 
Stol'n by my daughter ! Justice ! find the girl ! 
She hath the stones upon her, and the ducats. 5 

But Shakespeare is not content to picture his rage by 
another man's mouth. He brings it, with Shylock him- 
self, upon the scene ; and few things more wonderful have 



THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 139 

ever been briefly written of many broken, varied passions, 
confused by their own fury, and storming through a man's 
soul, than the interview of Tubal and Shylock. 

All this infernal fire seethes in him, till at last Antonio 
is in his hands ; and it motives, sufficiently to satisfy 
what is just in art, the inexorable thirst of his revenge 
in the scene in the court. Without this preparation, his 
height of malice and fury would seem immoderate — 

So can I give no reason, nor I will not, 

More than a lodg'd hate and a certain loathing 

I bear Antonio, that I follow thus 

A losing suit against him. Are you answered ? 

Bass. Do all men kill the things they do not love ? 

Shy. Hates any man the thing he would not kill ? 

Bass. Every offence is not a hate at first. 

Shy. What ! wouldst thou have a serpent sting thee twice ? 

These are terrible sentences, and they are matched by 
those that follow, till he leaps forward with the knife to 
the breast of Antonio : ' Most learned judge ! A sen- 
tence ! come, prepare ! ' Then, at the very height of his 
passion, on the very finest edge of his revenge, he is 
defrauded of his desire. Baffled by his own passions, 
hurled from his dark heaven to his deepest hell, he 
passes from the court in a dreadful loneliness ; so baited 
by his foes that we feel half inclined to take his part. 
To take his goods was just, and half of them goes to his 
daughter. To make him a Christian on pain of death 
was unjust, and unfair to Christianity. 

It is like Shakespeare to gather some vague pity round 
him at the last. Moreover, we are prepared beforehand 
even for that. Shylock is made bad by the degradation 
of the world, the love of money. But he is made more 
than bad by untoward circumstance. One man, who 
has no care for money but flings it away, stands in his 
path and loathes him as a Jew. His daughter robs 



140 LECTURES OF SHAKESPEARE 

him, flies from him with a spendthrift Christian, and 
becomes a Christian. There is some excuse for his over- 
topping hatred. In an odd recess of our nature, it is 
possible to give it a faint sympathy. Then, he is once, 
at least, not thinking of himself, but of his nation 
and his religion. He is not only Shylock, he is a Jew. 
He hates Antonio, for he is a Christian. The sorrows 
of his race, the injustice done his people for ages are in, 
his heart, and he adds them to his personal hatred. 
Moreover, even in his rage, he has his tender memories 
of the past. Perhaps only Shakespeare would then, midst 
of Shylock's sordid soul, bid arise the vision of Leah, the 
sweetheart of his youth : ' Thou torturest me, Tubal ; it 
was my turquoise; I had it of Leah when I was a 
bachelor : I would not have given it for a wilderness of 
monkeys.' 

We pity him then in his torment, but Shakespeare 
makes a bolder claim on our pity. Shylock appeals to 
humanity itself against the vast injustice meted out to 
his race. We are Jews, but we are men. I will avenge 
my nation and myself. 

Salar. Why, I am sure, if he forfeit, thou wilt not take his flesh : 
what 's that good for ? 

Shy. To bait fish withal : if it will feed nothing else, it will 
feed my revenge. He hath disgraced me, and hindered me half a 
million, laughed at my losses, mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, 
thwarted my bargains, cooled my friends, heated mine enemies ; and 
what's his reason? I am a Jew. Hath not a Jew eyes? hath not 
a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions ? fed with 
the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, 
healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and 
summer, as a Christian is ? If you prick us, do we not bleed ? if you 
tickle us, do we not laugh ? if you poison us, do we not die ? and, if 
you wrong us, shall we not revenge ? If we are like you in the rest, 
we will resemble you in that. If a Jew wrong a Christian, what is his 
humility 1 Revenge. If a Christian wrong a Jew, what should his 
sufferance be by Christian example ? Why, revenge. The villainy you 
teach me I will execute, and it shall go hard but I will better the 
instruction. 



THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 141 

This is bis challenge to humanity, and fierce as it is, 
it stirs our pity and our sense of justice. 

In the midst of this whirlpool of rage and sorrow, 
Shakespeare, with his dramatic habit of relieving and 
enlivening his audience, introduces Launcelot Gobbo, 
the peasant-servant, the humourist of the piece. His 
father, a poor peasant of the mainland, brings a basket of 
doves as a suitable present to Shylock. Launcelot, now 
of the town, is far beyond that naivete. The city has 
given him wit and individuality. He is able to imagine 
two persons in himself, the fiend and his conscience, and 
to conceive of himself as a third who judges between the 
other two. Jessica finds him a merry devil, and he is 
as self-contented as Autolycus, but no rogue. The 
humorous strife he pictures in himself between his 
conscience and the fiend, his jaunty play with his sand- 
blind father, are a happy change, for the moment, from 
the furious hatred of Shylock and the heavy fates hang- 
ing over Antonio. Yet Shakespeare, always careful for 
the knitting of his play into unity, links Launcelot to the 
Jew, to Lorenzo and to Jessica ; and then, having bound 
him up with the Jew story, now binds him up with 
the casket story. He sends him to Belmont as one of 
Bassanio's servants. 

At Belmont we meet Portia, the queen of the play, the 
Muse of Wisdom and of Love. Her wisdom, we under- 
stand, is partly hereditary : it is the wisdom of her father's 
goodness. The fantastic lottery he devised, in the Three 
Caskets, for his daughter's marriage, is felt, even by 
Nerissa, to be wise. The right casket, she thinks, will 
never be chosen rightly, but by one who shall rightly 
love, who ' shall give, and hazard, all he hath ' — a keen 
definition of the true lover; and Bassanio, the true lover, 
understands it. But Portia's wisdom is, above all, the 
wisdom of fine womanhood. Underneath her distinct 



142 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

type, and unaffected by her wealth and rank, the 
instincts natural to pure womanhood direct her speech 
and action. She is as natural as Eve in Paradise. And 
it is by these instincts, that, in moments of crisis, she acts 
with a noble promptitude. When she hears Antonio's 
letter telling of his cruel fate, touched with sorrow, she 
breaks out with her native impulsiveness ; 

O love, despatch all business, and be gone. 

Her passionate pity forgets her marriage. 

When Bassanio is gone, when all the rest are con- 
fused, she sees in a moment the right thing to do, and 
does it instantly. She carries out her plan with a gracious 
audacity, and is so gay in her travesty of herself as a man 
— as Rosalind was — that she makes fun of herself with 
Nerissa. Yet, the steadfast weight of* her character always 
tells on her company. Respect and honour follow her. 
The princes bow to her will. The love she so frankly 
confesses to Bassanio does not lessen, but increases, his 
reverence for her. That light girl, Jessica, loves her and 
thinks that 'the poor, rude world hath not her fellow.' 
Her servants worship her ; and Nerissa, in her close con- 
fidence, at home with all her thoughts, never varies in 
respect for her. Lorenzo, full of reverence, is struck by 
her intelligent judgment of affairs, by the nobility of her 
quick unselfish action in all that concerns Antonio and her 
husband. She knows, as few women do, what a friendship 
between one man and another is, and acts for it, even 
though it separates her from Bassanio on her wedding 

day; 

Madam, although I speak it in your presence, 
You have a noble and a true conceit 
Of god-like amity ; which appears most strongly 
In bearing thus the absence of your lord. 

A great lady, of a great house, her manners are those of 
well-bred society. It is a gross mistake when the actress 



THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 143 

who represents her forgets this, and, when Portia is gay, 
makes her skip about the stage as if she were Nerissa. 
Because she is merry, it does not follow that she is 
skittish. She ought always to keep her dignity on the 
stage, and the stately manners of her rank. With what 
graceful courtesy she receives the princes of Morocco and 
of Aragon ; how full of respect they are, even when they are 
disappointed ! Yet, she is as natural as the day, as uncon- 
ventional as Rosalind, though she is so much older ; and 
as free of her tongue as that delightful girl. Her intellect 
is not as keen and swift as Rosalind's ; it is more the 
intellect of a highly educated person who has great 
practical ability, than a naturally fine intellect like Rosa- 
lind's. She has the training of the New Learning ; is not 
without its knowledge of the classics, nor without its 
philosophic moralities, nor without its love of music. 
This play is full of the loveliness and charm of sweet 
music, and Portia is its lover. So is Lorenzo, so is Jessica. 
The gardens of Belmont are alive with music. And here 
Bassanio is to choose the casket to the sound of music. 
If he fail, he makes then a swanlike end, fading in music ; 
if he win, the music is the flourish with which a king is 
welcomed, or a bridegroom hears on his marriage day. 
When Bassanio goes to the caskets, she is quite at home 
in her classical illustration — 

Now he goes, 
With no less presence, but with much more love, 
Than young Alcides, when he did redeem 
The virgin tribute paid by howling Troy 
To the sea-monster : I stand for sacrifice ; 
The rest aloof are the Dardanian wives, 
With bleared visages, come forth to view 
The issue of the exploit. Go, Hercules ! 
Live thou, I live : with much, much more dismay 
I view the fight than thou that mak'st the fray. 

Her philosophic turn is always womanly. It does not 
argue, but speaks on the impulse of the hour, touched 



144 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

into sudden thought by some impression from nature or 
human life. Quick on the touch her natural wisdom begins 
to flow. A happy goodness then inspires her soul into 
speech, as when her unpremeditated appeal for mercy 
enchants the court of law. Or, we hear some note of 
the universal reason, some pregnant saying to explain 
life ; I quote her talk with Nerissa when she comes 
home. It touches with delicate grace one side of Portia's 
character, the meditative, pensive side — 

Por. That light we see is burning in my hall- 
How far that little candle throws hi3 beams ! 
So shines a good deed in a naughty world. 

Ner. When the moon shone, we did not see the candle. 

Por. So doth the greater glory dim the less : 
A substitute shines brightly as a king 
Until a king be by, and then his state 
Empties itself, as cloth an inland brook 
Into the main of waters. Music ! hark ! 

Ner. It is your music, madam, of the house. 

Por. Nothing is good, I see, without respect : 

Methinks it sounds much sweeter than by day. 

Ner. Silence bestows that virtue on it, madam. 

Por. The crow doth sing as sweetly as the lark 
When neither is attended, and I think 
The nightingale, if she should sing by day, 
When every goose is cackling, would be thought 
No better a musician than the wren. 
How many things by season season'd are 
To their right praise and true perfection ! 
Peace, ho ! the moon sleeps with Endymion, 
And would not be awak'd. 

Again, like many other women of the time, she knows 
some law ; and has probably studied at Padua. When she 
adopts the lawyer's robe at the trial, she is quite at home 
in it. The phrases of the profession are at the fringe 
of her lips. Never was a more charming lawyer ; she is 
easily counsel, jury, and judge; and all the men show dull 
before her mastery. She alone is the overthrower of 
Shylock, the saviour of Antonio. She knits together in 
this judgment scene the two parts of the play. The 



THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 145 

woman of the caskets solves the question of the Jew 
and his victim. Everything in the drama radiates to 
this scene, and Portia is the centre of the radiation. 

What I have said of her belongs chiefly to her woman- 
hood as it appears openly to the world. But she is far 
more than these externals, though they are part of her 
womanhood. They suit her like well-fitting garments, 
but they scarcely reveal her inmost self. When, how- 
ever, we first meet her, she is alone with her maid 
Nerissa, and we are nearer to her secret. Her first 
sentence, and perhaps Shakespeare meant this, matches 
her temper with the first sentence of Antonio. He is 
weary in his age. She, in her youth, is momentarily 
tired : ' By my troth, Nerissa, my little body is a- weary 
of this great world.' Nerissa smiles, and answers to her 
mood, playing, like her mistress afterwards, with philo- 
sophy. Even the servants are touched with the New 
Learning — 

You would be, sweet madam, if your miseries were in the same 
abundance as your good fortunes are : and yet, for aught I see, they are 
as sick that surfeit with too much as they that starve with nothing. It 
is no mean happiness, therefore, to be seated in the mean : superfluity 
comes sooner by white hairs, but competency lives longer. 

At this sententious mirth Portia is weary no longer. 
When her intellect is stirred, her sadness vanishes into 
gaiety. ' Good sentences,' she cries, ' and well pro- 
nounced.' ' They would be better,' answers Nerissa, ' if 
well followed.' Then Portia lets her wise wit fly — 

If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had 
been churches, and poor men's cottages princes' palaces. It is a good 
divine that follows his own instructions : I can easier teach twenty what 
were good to be done, than be one of the twenty to follow mine own 
teaching. The brain may devise laws for the blood, but a hot temper 
leaps o'er a cold decree : such a hare is madness the youth, to skip o'er 
the meshes of good counsel the cripple. 

And now, being turned to wit, she sketches, with a gay 
K 



146 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

sarcastic grace, all her suitors. The passages are worth a 
little study, for they probably express Shakespeare's opinion 
of the uneducated upper classes in society; in Naples, 
France, England, Scotland, Germany. 'God defend me 
from them,' says Portia. ' God made him,' she says of the 
Frenchman, ' therefore let him pass for a man.' ' I like 
the German very vilely in the morning, when he is sober, 
and most vilely in the afternoon when he is drunk. I 
will do anything, Nerissa, ere I '11 be married to a sponge.' 
As to the English baron, Shakespeare himself speaks 
by Portia's mouth. 'How oddly he is suited! I think 
he bought his doublet in Italy, his round hose in France, 
his bonnet in Germany, and his behaviour everywhere.' 

This is the gay, unmalicious satire of a girl amusing 
herself at home ; and we think, with no ungracious envy, 
how entertaining Bassanio will find her in the morning 
garden after breakfast. She will be different when 
evening falls, and the sentiment of night is born. Then 
she will speak as she does to Nerissa in the scene that 
I have quoted. For her moods change with change of 
circumstance. But we have not pierced as yet to the 
inmost shrine of her nature, where Love sits and com- 
mands her. She would not be true Italian, not a woman 
of her time, nor the complete woman she is, had she not 
felt through all her nature the lifting wave of passion. 
Her confession of love to Bassanio, before he chooses 
from the casket, might seem too frank were it not that 
they had often met before, as Shakespeare is at pains 
to tell us, and interchanged ' speechless glances ' ; were it 
not that Bassanio has declared his love again and again 
before he runs his risk of failure. Her speech to him is 
an answer, not a proposal. Yet, though warm with love, 
it is full of a noble restraint. She says enough to let 
Bassanio be sure she loves him, but she keeps back much, 
for, if he were to choose wrongly, she must say farewell 



THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 147 

to him forever. Yet we feel, while she speaks, that she 
faith true love will solve the riddle rightly. This 
little speech is a masterpiece. 

Afterwards, when her lover has chosen and he is hers, 
the humility of love enters into her soul and makes it 
the home of grace, dignity, and happiness. She lays 
herself, her heart, her spirit, her home at his command. 
It might seem as if she had lost her individuality too 
h were it not that Bassanio's reverence for her is 
deepened by the yielding of her love. It is the giving 
of love, not the giving up of personality. She claims, not 
long after, full equality with him in affairs, and she is 
more than his equal. Only love makes Portia yield 
herself, and in the yielding she retains her dignity and 
her distinctiveness. But the cry, where we reach to her 
very centre, is that she utters to herself alone when she 
sees Bassanio choose the right casket, and knows that 
she will have her life in having her love. No one hears 
it ; it is the voice of lonely passion, and no words of love 
are more intense in Shakespeare — all the more intense 
for her call for temperance in that she feels. This cry 
comes out of the white fire in the innermost chamber 
of Portia's soul. She sees him touch the leaden casket 
where her portrait is, and to herself she speaks — 

How all the other passions fleet to air, 

As doubtful thoughts, and rash-embrac'd despair, 

And shuddering fear, and green-ey'd jealousy. 

love ! be moderate ; allay thy ecstasy ; 
In measure rain thy joy ; scant this excess : 

1 feel too much thy blessing ; make it less, 
For fear I surfeit. 

There is the essence of the woman. 

In the trial scene she is the mouthpiece of Bellario, 
but her speech on the excellence of mercy is her own. It 
is excellent, but it owes its astonishing vogue more to 
the religious form it takes than to any unequalled 



148 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

supremacy in its poetry. There are many passages in 
Shakespeare far beyond it in high imagination. We are 
glad when the judgment scene is over, and she becomes 
the Portia whose quiet wisdom says to Nerissa, as she 
comes into her park beneath the moon — 

How many things by season ,season'd are 
To their right praise and true perfection ! 

Farewell, then, to Portia. She will live as long as the 
stage lives, and, after that, in the hearts of men who like 
a woman to be better than themselves. 

Lastly, there is the little pretty idyll at the end, 
a pleasant relief from the heated airs of the judgment- 
hall. We slip from Venice and the crowd, from trade 
and its angers, from the tragic fates of men, into the 
moonlit gardens of Belmont, into the laughing, loving 
company of Jessica and Lorenzo. Shakespeare was 
still, in this early play, the dramatist of love — of love 
with a hundred facets, like a diamond. It was not now 
so much the passion itself that he described as the 
various forms the passion took. Here, having repre- 
sented in Portia and Bassanio love in its stateliness 
of manners and of thought, in its recognition of duty 
and great affairs as moderating its intensity, he repre- 
sents a lighter phase of love — not stately and without 
any relation to duty or society, not immoderate because 
so light, having the passionateness of youthful life but 
no more than that — in Jessica and Lorenzo. These gay 
and airy creatures, the butterflies of the play, dart in and 
out of the scenes, flitting, with a touch of pleasure, from 
character to character ; quite irresponsible, not conscious 
of a conscience as yet, all for love and joy and for both 
without a thought of the past or the future ; not knowing 
where they are going, drifting by chance to Belmont; 
but so charming, so honest in their lightheartedness and 
loving that Portia hands over to them the care of her 



THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 149 

household, that every one is fond of them. They 
je, though they have done nothing to deserve it, 
the fortune of the Jew. It will not make them more 
happy or less happy than they are. They will spend or 
give it all away. 

Here, in this final act, these butterflies are at last at 
rest at night under the stars; and though their love 
is gay and aerial, it is, at this learned and cultured 
time, decked out with imagination and with thought. 
Their imagination is poetic and their thought not remote 
from the philosophy and the classic spirit of the New 
Learning. Few passages in Shakespeare have more of 
the far-off magic of poetry than this converse between 
Lorenzo and Jessica. 

Belmont. Avenue to Portia's house. 
Enter Lorenzo and Jessica. 

Lor. The moon shines bright : in such a night as this, 
When the sweet wind did gently kiss the trees 
And they did make no noise, in such a night 
Troilus methinks mounted the Troyan walls, 
And sigh'd his soul towards the Grecian tents, 
Where Cressid lay that night. 

Jess. In such a night 

Did Thisbe fearfully o'ertrip the dew, 
And saw the lion's shadow ere himself, 
And ran dismay'd away. 

Lor. In such a night 

Stood Dido with a willow in her hand 
Upon the wild sea-banks, and waft her love 
To come again to Carthage. 

Jes3. In such a night 

Medea gather'd the enchanted herbs 
That did renew old iEson. 

Lor. In such a night 

Did Jessica steal from the wealthy Jew, 
And with an unthrift love did run from Venice, 
As far as Belmont. 

Jess. In such a night 

Did young Lorenzo swear he lov'd her well, 



150 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

Stealing her soul with many vows of faith, 

And ne'er a true one. 
Lor. In such a night 

Did pretty Jessica, like a little shrew, 

Slander her love, and he forgave it her. 
Jess. I would out-night you, did no body come ; 

But, hark ! I hear the footing of a man. 

Then, after an interruption — 

Lor. How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this hank ! 
Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music 
Creep in our ears : soft stillness and the night 
Become the touches of sweet harmony. 
Sit, Jessica : look, how the floor of heaven 
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold : 
There 's not the smallest orb that thou behold'st 
But in his motion like an angel sings, 
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubins. 
Such harmony is in immortal souls ; 
But, whilst this muddy vesture of decay 
Doth grossly close us in, we cannot hear it. 

Enter Musicians. 

Come, ho ! and wake Diana with a hymn : 
With sweetest touches pierce your mistress' ear, 
And draw her home with music. 

Jess. I am never merry when I hear sweet music. 

Lor. The reason is, your spirits are attentive. 

Such was, in Shakespeare's imagination, the pleasant 
talk of lovers in that cultured time, lovers worthy of 
that exquisite song Bassanio hears when his love leads 
him to choose rightly. 

Tell me where is fancy bred, 
Or in the heart or in the head ? 
How begot, how nourished ? 

Reply, reply. 
It is engender' d in the eyes, 
With gazing fed ; and fancy dies 
In the cradle where it lies. 

Let us all ring fancy's knell ; 

I '11 begin it, — Ding, dong, bell. 
All. Ding, dong, bell. 



THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 151 

And so, with that sweet sound, farewell to the 
Merchant of Venice. 

The conventional poetic note which we have observed 
here and there in Romeo and Juliet, and which tragedy 
may excuse, may be said to have wholly disappeared in 
this play. Bassanio, Antonio, Gratiano and the rest speak 
among themselves the language of men of the world, 
engaged in great or small affairs. Antonio's high-moving 
phrases, when they occur, are natural enough to his senti- 
mental character. When Bassanio and Lorenzo talk to 
their sweethearts, their speech, of course, lifts itself into 
poetic forms ; and it is the same with Portia, who speaks 
in gay prose when she is not deeply moved. Salarino's 
description of the possible loss of Antonio's ships is 
heightened by his imaginative turn; but otherwise we 
may say that in this play, and for the first time, the 
conversation is entirely natural and easy, in harmony 
with the character of the speakers and with the various 
situations. Shakespeare has simplified his methods. 

The characters, not only of the chief but of the lesser 
personages, are clearly divided from one another. No 
one could confuse Gratiano with Salarino whose half- 
poetic fancy divides him from his companions ; or Salanio, 
who is of a less intelligent type, with Salarino. Each 
stands separate. 

As to Bassanio, much more might be made of him on 
the stage than is usual among actors. To conceive him 
rightly one ought to know something of the social life of 
Venice when the city was not only great but magnificent. 
Bassanio is not only young, handsome, with love-inspiring 
eyes, and impetuous (he will not wait a moment, even at 
Portia's request, to make his choice of the caskets) ; he 
is also a splendid noble, whose train and liveries are 
gorgeous, who comes to woo Portia in all the glory of 



152 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

young Venice. A fine splendour ought to belong to his 
representation. Along with that, the actor ought to con- 
ceive his soul. He is essentially loveable. Men like 
Antonio love him; Portia loves him, Nerissa thinks no 
one so worthy of Portia. He is himself capable of true 
and passionate love ; yet, to rescue his friend, he leaves 
Portia upon his wedding day. Moreover, he is not the 
splendid lover only ; he is also one who has considered 
the world in quiet thought. His speech over the caskets 
is that of a man who has seen and brooded over many 
characters, and the two illustrations he uses in talking 
to Portia are both drawn from public affairs, as if he 
were at home in them. They lower, it is true, the note 
of passion which ought then to prevail, but they also 
slide into the scene the image of the Venetian state which 
is deliberately impressed upon the play. There is a cer- 
tain conventionalism in his speech when he unveils ' fair 
Portia's counterfeit,' but he makes up for that afterwards 
when his modesty is made certain of her love for him. 
He is worth an actor's study. 

A word may be said concerning the representation of 
Shylock. I suppose it is the tradition to represent him 
as a decrepit, old, and dirty Jew, in worn and almost 
ragged clothes, with a senile stoop and manner — I have 
seen him look like Fagin on the stage. The Duke calls 
him ' old Shylock,' but to be old is not to be decrepit. He 
is in full possession of his faculties ; he can dine out ; he 
is active on the Rialto ; his stormy passion of wrath and 
revenge is not that of a feeble old man, but of a man of 
sixty or so who may be called old, but whose blood is hot 
and his will resolute. 

He is a miser, or rather a gold-breeder, but he is not a 
ragged miser, nor a dirty one. I am sure Shakespeare 
meant him to be clean and decently dressed, and re- 
spected by his countrymen on the Rialto. The Christians 



THE MERCHANT OF VENICE 153 

might call him dog, but Tubal and the rest knew better. 
Though he keeps Lancelot's extravagant temper in order, 
he does not really stint his food. Loss of. jewels and 
money maddens him, but other folk than misers are 
affected in the same way. His miserliness has been 
exaggerated into an extreme, and it is plain that his 
love of money is absorbed by his hatred and his love of 
vengeance. 

At first he is only the business man who makes money 
breed as Jacob made his ewes. Then suddenly it occurs 
to him that he will take the chance of entrapping Antonio ; 
and then hate conquers money-getting. Moreover, the 
Jew in him arises, and money-getting is also lost in the 
desire to avenge the cause of Israel against the Christian. 
Both of those passions mingle in him, one-'^5ersonal, 
one national, and strengthen one another. Then, he is 
uplifted, far above the usurer and the vulgar Jew, on to 
the tragic plane. The servility of the Jew is killed. His 
speech gains nobility ; it is resolute and strong. Only to 
Tubal, his countryman, does he reveal any weakness after 
his first outburst of rage in the streets. He claims the 
law ; he appeals to the Duke, he puts the whole of Venice 
into action and disturbance. He attacks the jailer in the 
streets for permitting Antonio to take the air. The fury 
of his passion has made him for the moment another 
man. He ought to tower in the court. Bated breath 
and whispering humbleness or mean cunning have no- 
thing to do with his appearance. His revenge should 
straighten his back, and flame in his eyes, and dignify 
his port. The more he towers above the rest, the more 
dramatic his sudden fall may be made ; the fiercer, the 
more absorbing is his passion, the more it forgets every- 
thing but itself, the more the actor has to do when his 
revenge is cut away from under his feet. When the 
actor makes him an object of pity during the judgment 



154 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

scene, he misses Shakespeare's aim. When the judgment 
is given, and not till then, pity may be claimed ; but it 
is pity greatly modified by horror at the image he has 
presented of unrelenting and furious revenge. I do not 
believe that Shakespeare meant us to have more pity for 
Shylock than may be felt for him after his speech in 
which the Jew appeals to the Christian as man to man : 
'Hath not a Jew eyes?' Nor do I think that his last 
speech is the speech of a broken man. Even after his 
terrible overthrow, enough of the swell of his rage and 
hatred lasts to take him with some tragic dignity out of 
the court. He accepts his fate, but it is with flashing 
eyes, and his ' I am not well ' need not contradict this. 
He flings it to them as an excuse for departure. 

I pray you give me leave to go from hence ; 
I am not well. Send the deed after me, 
And I will sign it. - • 

When Shylock breaks down, it is when he is alone in 
his empty house. And Shakespeare leaves that to our 
imagination. 



VI 

AS YOU LIKE IT 

The title strikes the chord of this beautiful, gay, and 
graceful play. Shakespeare laughed out the title one day 
after reading what he had written. ' Take it as you like 
it, in whatever way it pleases you. Take its mirth or 
seriousness, its matter of thought or fancy, its grave or 
lively characters, its youthful love and self-conscious 
melancholy — take anything you like out of it. There is 
plenty to please all kinds of men. It is written for your 
pleasure. Take it for your pleasure.' 

The solemn professor, the most solid moralist, will not 
be able to assert that Shakespeare wrote this play with 
a moral purpose, or from a special desire to teach 
mankind. He wrote is as he liked it, for his own delight. 
He hoped men would listen to it for their pleasure, and 
take it just as they liked best to take it. It is true there 
is much matter in it, as there is in human life, which 
the prophets and moralists may use for their own pur- 
poses, but Shakespeare did not write these things for 
their ethical ends. He wrote them because they were 
the right things in their places; and he smiled, as he 
wrote them, with pleasure in them. ' I do not mind,' he 
would have said, ' how you use my play, if only you let the 
lover and his maiden, the Duke and his hunters, the fool 
and the shepherd, Jaques and Silvius and Phoebe, aye and 
the forest and the deer, do with it also what they like, 
and as they like it. I have made a new Thing ; let every 
one enjoy it.' 



156 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

We have therefore got back, out of the tragic and semi- 
tragic world in which we have been, to Shakespeare's full 
and delightful gaiety, to the very root of his nature, to 
that which made his tragedy so intense — paradox as that 
saying may seem to be. In As You Like It we touch 
Shakespeare as Nature freshly made him, the wise, de- 
lightful, sunny Creature, whom Nature in her happiest 
hour gave to us for our eternal pleasure. And, indeed, 
Milton seems to have felt that this grace, wildness, gaiety, 
sweetness and joy, were the primal things in Shakespeare. 
When he writes of him, he does not think of the great 
tragedies, but of the times when 

Sweetest Shakespeare, Nature's child, 
Warbles his native wood-notes wild. 

And ' wood-notes,' that selected word, may have been used 
as Milton thought of the wood near Athens and of the 
forest of Arden. 

It was after the misery and slaughter of the Civil Wars, 
after Richard II. and 777., after Henry IV. and V., that 
Shakespeare returned to his sunny happiness in three 
delightful comedies — Twelfth Night, Much Ado About 
Nothing, and As You Like It. With this return he re- 
sumes his constant subject, in its joy or its sorrow, the 
subject of love. And in these comedies he is at play with 
love. They are ruled by the god of love at his choicest 
pranks, in Protean shapes, and varied through a multi- 
tude of moods. Most men at Shakespeare's age (he was 
now about thirty-seven or thirty-eight) would have lost 
their youthful brightness, gamesomeness, and delight in 
life. Love would have ceased to be radiant, jewelled with 
joy, and full of sport. But Shakespeare has lost nothing. 
He is Orlando ; he is Rosalind. ' Age cannot wither him, 
nor custom stale his infinite variety.' 

In this play love lives in many forms : in Orlando and 



AS YOU LIKE IT 157 

Rosalind. Celia and Oliver, Silvius and Phcebe, Touch- 
stone and Audrey. We see also other forms of love : 
the love of two girls for one another, of Adam for his 
master and his master for him, of Touchstone for Celia 
and Rosalind. Even a few touches are given to us of a 
daughter's affection for her father. But these lands of 
love, outside the passion of youthful love, are but side- 
issues, due to the love of Shakespeare for lovingness. Of 
them all, in comparison with the enchanted drawing of 
love between man and woman, Rosalind's phrase may be 
said, ' But what talk we of fathers, when there is such a 
man as Orlando ? ' 

In this play also the lovers love one another at first 
sight. 

Dead shepherd, now I find thy saw of might : 
Who ever lov'd that lov'd not at first sight 1 

is the cry of Phoebe when she sees Rosalind, and thinks 
she is a man. Rosalind is smitten the moment she sees 
Orlando, Orlando when he sees Rosalind. When Oliver and 
Celia meet, they 'no sooner saw one another but they 
loved.' We know from The Tempest that Shakespeare kept 
this belief of his early life to his later days. It was like his 
naturalness to believe in love at first sight, like a man who 
lived in that swift and undelaying time, like the southern 
warmth of his temperament, like his reverence for passion 
as a native goodness in human nature. And love, in his 
work, even when it breaks at once into the full-blown rose, 
is always modest, chaste, true, faithful, and full of fire and 
joy. Moreover, when circumstance is not dark, it is not 
isolating, selfish, foolish, or sentimental. It thinks of 
others ; it sees things clearly, and is quick to meet them. 
It has fine intellect at hand to use, and uses it. And it 
is full of common-sense. 

There is not a word of this which might not be proved 
from the love-play of Orlando and Rosalind. That is one 



158 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

of the gayest things in Shakespeare. The wit which 
flashes through their conversation does not lessen its clean 
brightness from the beginning to the end, neither does 
the pleasant humour which plays innocuous over every 
circumstance, over every character, and over the natural 
world. Nor is the humour forced or conventional or 
derived from others. It is the natural bubbling up of the 
fountain of happy youth into gracious gaiety of temper, 
into self-delighting joy. We, who listen, cannot enjoy the 
humour of the situation when, dressed as a gallant hunter 
Rosalind meets Orlando, half as much as she enjoys it her- 
self. She plays with it as a kitten with a ball. Her love 
develops, does not check or dim, her humour. As to her 
natural intellect, it is the same with that. Love has not 
impaired it. It is as swift and various as summer light- 
ning; and though it flashes here and there and every- 
where, it always strikes the point at issue. It sees into 
the centre of all masked conventions. It understands 
Jaques in a moment, though he is a man of the world 
and she a girl; and lays him bare to himself. Yet all 
the time this clear-eyed intellect is working on life, she is 
so deep in love that it cannot be sounded. In her, emotion 
and intellect are equal powers. 

coz, coz, coz, my pretty little coz, that thou- didst know how many 
fathom deep I am in love ! But it cannot be sounded : my affection 
hath an unknown bottom, like the bay of Portugal. 

Orlando's love is of the same quality, full of gaiety, 
even though — for he cannot find Rosalind — it be dashed 
with a shade of natural melancholy : amusing itself with 
delightful verses hung on happy trees, ready to play with 
the pretty youth he is pleased to call his Rosalind ; witty 
enough to make the talk lively, not witty enough to dis- 
please the girl who would not wish him to be brilliant 
when he thought he was away from her ; of a grave intel- 



AS YOU LIKE IT 159 

Hgence also when he chooses ; able, like Rosalind, to over- 
come Jaques with his own weapons. 

Love, with him, is no mournful, depressing companion. 
It kindles into brightness all his powers, as it does with 
Rosalind. There is no fading in its rose, no false senti- 
ment, none of the marks of a dying lover. Rosalind sees 
this, and would be inwardly pleased with it — 

A lean cheek, which you have not ; a blue eye and sunken, which 
you have not ; an unquestionable spirit, which you have not ; a beard 
neglected, which you have not ; but I pardon you for that, for, simply, 
your having in beard is a younger brother's revenue. Then, your hose 
should be uhgartered, your bonnet unhanded, your sleeve unbuttoned, 
your shoe untied, and everything about you demonstrating a careless 
desolation. But you are no such man : you are rather point-device in 
your accoutrements ; as loving yourself than seeming the lover of any 
other. 

In both, their love enkindles, not only itself to finer 
loving, but all their natural qualities. To read of it is 
pleasure. It gives almost as much pleasure as it has. 

The love of Celia and Oliver is of a different kind, a 
swift, mutual passion, more of the senses that the soul. 
Rosalind does not like it, as we hear from her account of 
it. She is more scornful than pleased. It jars on her 
dignity, on her humorous nature. There is no play in it, 
such as she has had with Orlando, to keep it healthy. And 
we do not expect it of Celia ; this kind of passion does 
not lie in her character as we have seen it ; and I think 
Shakespeare has been betrayed into inventing something 
which is not quite in nature by his desire to wind up 
his play by such a reconciliation of Oliver and Orlando 
as will make everything comfortable for Rosalind and 
Orlando in the future. It is against probability that 
Oliver should change in a moment from the scoundrel he 
is in the first act to a high-bred gentleman, only because 
his brother did not allow him to be killed by a serpent 
and a lioness. The invention of the lioness and the fight 



160 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

becomes improbable because of the main improbability. 
And, moreover, I cannot get over the matching of Celia to 
a man whose nature has been for many- years that of a 
ruffian, a murderer, and a greedy dog. It stains her 
pleasant image. Oliver has repented, but we are sorry for 
Celia. Shakespeare ought not to have made him so very 
bad in the beginning, if he was to be so good in the end. 
It is out of tune. 

In the original story the improbability is not so great. 
Oliver, after his banishment, meets Celia as she is being 
carried away by. robbers, and rescues her. Had Shake- 
speare alluded to this event, as he might easily have done, 
he would have 'motived' that strangeness in Celia's conduct 
which even love does not fully excuse. It would make 
her conduct possible, but not beautiful. The event may 
have been in his mind, and itfi insertion neglected, but the 
text does not support that suggestion. This thing is a 
blot on the play. 

The love of Silvius and Phoebe is the conventional 
love of the Elizabethan Pastoral; and it may be, in 
this love - drama, a satire on that academic, literary 
love. He who conceived the natural love of Orlando and 
Rosalind would* see no reality in the artificial love of 
Corydon and Phyllis ; and it would be quite like Shake- 
speare to make a picture of it, partly for the sake of pleasant 
mockery of it, and partly in order to contrast it with 
natural love in Rosalind and Orlando. But, as he is in 
earnest all through this play, and as love of whatever 
kind is at root serious as well as gay to him, he touches 
the love of Silvius with reality. Its expression goes far 
beyond the conventional phrasing of the Pastoral. It 
seems a pity that Silvius is almost too great a fool for 
any woman to care for. But he is in earnest, and Rosalind 
sees that he is ; and while she strives to lash him into 
rebellion against Phoebe, she also takes some pains to get 



AS YOU LIKE IT 161 

his sweetheart for him in the end. She does not pity 
him, for his want of manliness deserves no pity ; but she 
uses Phoebe's love for her (as a man) to soften her heart, to 
make her understand what Silvius has suffered ; and, in 
that new temper, Phcebe takes Silvius because he has 
been faithful. The conventional love is led into the 
natural ; and the way it is managed is as pretty a piece of 
work as is to be found in Shakespeare. 

The best characteristic of the play is beauty. I am 
not sure that it is not the most beautiful of all the 
comedies, because the beautiful in it is so joyous, and 
distributed with so equal a hand over the whole. It is 
pervasive, like a sweet air in which all things are seen 
delicately. There may be lovelier or grander passages of 
poetry in other comedies than any we find here, but no 
other comedy has the same equality of poetry, the same 
continuity of lovely emotion, of delightful charm, and of 
finished execution. And though the poetry in the tragic 
plays may have more of fire and sensuousness, of emotion 
breaking into ideal form, of thought on the verge of the 
eternal intelligence, yet here, where the gentle note of 
gaiety naturally eludes these supreme qualities, there is 
abundance of good matter, of the stuff of thought, of 
what Arnold would call the criticism of life. Few plays 
are wiser, more full of affectionate experience of human 
nature. And without that element of human wisdom and 
affection there is no great poetry. 

A greater beauty even than this is the beauty of 
character. Rosalind and Orlando ! could any one desire 
to have more charming, more ennobling companions 
than these two enchanting persons ? To live with them 
is to live with moral beauty, but it is not a beauty 
which the pharisaic moralist will like at all. Their life 
will do good to every one they meet. Rosalind even lifts 
her thought, at times, into a spiritual beauty, and then 

L 



162 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

returns to the natural, like the lark who soars in song 
and then drops downward to her nest. The characters 
of Celia, and of almost all the rest, are lower than Rosa- 
lind's, but they have a steady sweetness of nature. Of 
course, Jaques is set over against them, but even he is 
better than the cynic. There is a sadness in him which 
is real; he is not so bad a man as he has been; he is 
meditative, and has at times the gentleness of pensiveness. 
Then the banished Duke is a noble gentleman ; worldly- 
wise but enjoying the woods, pleased even with Jaques 
when in his sullen fits he is full of matter ; taking all his 
misfortunes with a gallant air, and turning them into good 
fortune; translating the stubbornness of ill-luck into so 
' quiet and so sweet a style ' that all the banished lords are 
happy with him ; finding good in everything, and as kind 
in his thoughts of animals as of men. Amiens, the other 
lords, even the pages, are courteous, good-humoured, 
musical, and ready to help. Silvius is not intelligent, 
but he is good ; Phcebe turns out very graciously ; Audrey 
is an honest creature; Touchstone loves his mistresses 
with fidelity, though he is naughty enough ; Corin is not 
only an honest labourer, he has also loved and can feel 
with those in love. As to Orlando, he is as good as 
gold. The mantle of Rosalind's sweetness and good- 
ness is over them all. We dwell in a world of moral 
beauty. Its characters soothe and heal the trouble of 
the world. 

Lastly, on this matter of beauty, how fair is the scenery, 
when we have left the Court ! Shakespeare builds it up 
by suggestions on the lips of the actors into lovely land- 
scape. The forest of Arden, by a lucky coincidence of 
name, puts us in mind of an English forest ; and seems 
to transfer the action to our own land. And Shakespeare, 
no doubt, with his patriotic passion, would have desired 
this. Whether he desired it or no, he played into this 



AS YOU LIKE IT 163 

idea. He used, as material, his youthful wanderings in 
the glades and by the streams of Warwickshire. 

I was staying at a little village some years ago, and went 
to walk in Leigh Park So vivid was the resemblance of 
the scenery to that of As You Like It, that I looked to 
come across the Duke and his lords dining in a glade, to 
find a copy of verses on a tree, to meet Rosalind, more 
than common tall, glancing from grove to grove. Great 
oaks were in the park, secular gentlemen, knotted and 
gnarled with many sorrows, and some had their ' boughs 
mossed with age, and high tops bald with dry antiquity.' 
A quiet-moving stream ran through the opener wood, 
pleased with its own chatter; with low sandy banks 
which broke down towards the shallows ; and on one of 
these, under a broad oak, the animals were wont to cross 
the stream. ' This,' I said, is the very place where Jaques 
watched the stricken deer weep in the stream, and the 
careless herd go by.' And while I stood there, hidden 
by the oak, it was my good fortune to see a stag leave 
the herd, and come to drink at the water. Such happy 
moments belong to life, and are beloved for ever. 

It is likely enough that Shakespeare had seen this very 
place. But whether he drew direct from nature or not, 
his forest is beautiful. We have walked in it a hundred 
times. We know intimately the oaks whose antique roots 
peep out, seen through the water, under the brook which 
brawls along the wood ; the shadowy glades where the Duke 
dined and the dead deer were laid on the grass ; the green- 
wood, where Robin Hood in old days blew his horn, where 
the merry-throated birds were singing, where the care- 
less herd 01 deer swept by; and in whose hollows grew 
thick the brambles, hawthorn, and green holly. We have 
seen the outskirts of the wood, where it passed into 
meadows and low hills covered with sheep. And there, 
near the edge, we met another stream that broke out 



164 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

from the forest, amid a rank of osiers. And in a neigh- 
bour bottom stood the cottage Rosalind rented from the 
churlish farmer. Outside the forest skirts she dwelt, 
like fringe upon a petticoat, a pleasant place that listened 
to the murmuring stream ; and near at hand a sheep-cote 
fenced about, as by a special gift of Providence to her, 
with olive-trees. She and Celia, even Touchstone, love 
the forest, and Rosalind loved it more when she heard 
Orlando had set up his dwelling in one of its caves. And 
Orlando thought it a pleasant place when he met the girls. 
But it had also its horror to one who came upon it, exiled, 
sorrowful, and starving. When Orlando first sees it, it 
is to him a 'desert inaccessible, shaded by melancholy 
boughs ' ; and in winter those who dwelt in it tell of the 
• icy fang, and churlish chiding of the wintry wind,' and 
of the ' foggy south puffing with wind and rain.' 

But now it was summer, now when Orlando and 
Rosalind flash into it, like two swallows; and the wood 
is altogether fair; a lovely place for beautiful people to 
dwell in, and ' fleet the time carelessly as in the golden 
world.' And now and then, Shakespeare, enchanted 
with his own creation, carries the forest away from this 
earth where winter breaks up the joyous plenitudes of 
summer, and places it in the far land of the imagination, 
where it is always summer, and wonderful things are 
common. And while he is there, in the dream, olive-trees 
slip into the northern forest, and palm-trees receive the 
love-rhymes of Orlando ; the green and gilded snakes of 
the tropics glide from bush to bush, and crouching in the 
brake a lean and hungry lioness, with udders all drawn 
dry, watches a sleeping man — such happy games, for its 
own delight and careless of reality, does imagination play. 
The forest is real, and yet slides into a dream, the stuff 
we are made of. But whether it be real or visionary, it is 
beautiful. 



AS YOU LIKE IT 165 

And now we come more directly to the play. It is 
adapted from, and follows very closely, Lodge's romance, 
Rosalynde, Ev/phues' Golden Legacie, a book issued in 
1590. The story is there, but the dialogue, the dramatic 
arrangement, the characters, and the life in the play 
are altogether Shakespeare's. He has, moreover, added 
Jaques, Touchstone, and Audrey, three different types of 
human nature. 

The first act makes the framework of the play. It tells 
of all the tangles which Rosalind un-ties in the end — 
the quarrel between the two Dukes, the quarrel between 
Orlando and Oliver, the dull anger of Duke Frederick, the 
fate of the banished Duke, the flight, with him, of many 
great lords to the forest. The working of this main 
quarrel is the cause why Rosalind and Celia take their 
flight, and Touchstone with them ; is the cause also why 
Orlando is banished and afterwards Oliver. And finally, 
out of this quarrel emerges Duke Frederick's repentance 
and the full solution of the drama. This then is the event 
which binds all the action into unity. 

This act moves at a quiet pace. It is varied, but it only 
awakens a pleasant excitement. Shakespeare neither 
hurries his beginnings nor wastes the sensations he keeps 
for their right place. As usual, he is most careful in 
his preparation. There 's not a matter branched out in 
the following acts which is not rooted in the first act, 
except the episode of Silvius and Phoebe, and the love- 
matter between Celia and Oliver, which seem like after- 
thoughts. In it Rosalind and Celia are longing for 
freedom ; Orlando sees Rosalind in it, and both are shaken 
into love ; in it Celia is so pained by her father's 
banishment of Rosalind, that she proposes flight. Rosalind 
is glad, for she may meet Orlando, who has already 
gone. Touchstone would go to the world's end with 
Celia. All converges, speech after speech, scene after 



166 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

scene, to the flight and the forest ; and the gentle excite- 
ment of one event after another, and of the thoughts the 
events have made, has lifted us slowly to the central point, 
the new and crowning theme on which all the rest of the 
music is to be wrought — the meeting of Rosalind and 
Orlando at the beginning of the third act in the forest 
of Arden. Around these two the rest are grouped, all the 
action plays, and all the characters develop themselves. 

Yet Rosalind and Orlando do not overtop or over- 
weight the play. Shakespeare's dramatic genius has 
now matured. The too great dominance of the leading 
characters — that common mistake of dramatists into 
which Shakespeare seems to have fallen in Richard II. 
and 17/. — is now quite absent from his work. Rosalind is 
chief, and Orlando next to her; but they do not over- 
whelm the Duke, or Jaques, or Touchstone, or Celia, or 
even Phoebe, Silvius, and Corin. These all play their 
parts, and the part each plays is full of life. And yet, 
Rosalind does not lose her supremacy. She is still first, 
but first, not because she is isolated from the other 
characters, but because she adds life to all that is living 
in them. She does not put out their light, but kindles 
it into a brighter flame of character. They burn all the 
brighter for her influence. A touch from her makes them 
reveal themselves. 

In the first act, Rosalind, Celia, and Orlando are not 
the gay persons they are afterwards ; and no wonder, their 
circumstances are disagreeable. The suppressed spirit of 
their youth is longing for freedom. Rosalind, having 
this longing — and her father's exile and her uncle's 
jealousy of her intensify it — is sad enough. Yet in her 
light liftings out of sadness we hear the far-off music 
of what is coming, the prelude to the happiness of her 
forest love-adventure. In her sadness also, and because 
of it, a part of her character is developed by Shakespeare 



AS YOU LIKE IT 107 

which we might not have divined from the following acts. 
We see the seriousness, the deep feeling, the solid sense, 
which lie beneath her youthful brightness. She cannot 
'forget her banished father,' cannot take part in any 'ex- 
traordinary pleasure.' She has now the reticent courtesy, 
the grave dignity and courage of a great lady. No actress 
who makes Rosalind even half a hoyden has the remotest 
idea of her character. She speaks to her uncle with due 
reverence for a great kinsman. But when he attacks her 
father, and her own honour, she answers him with a 
noble resolution — 

Treason is not inherited, my lord ; 

Or if we did derive it from our friends, 

What 's that to me ? My father was no traitor ! 

Thus she speaks out of that ' silence and patience ' — 
strange words, unlike the Rosalind we chiefly know — which 
have made the people pity her, and which, mistaken 
for subtlety of treason, urge the Duke to drive her away. 
This injustice impels her to a deeper melancholy — ' be 
cheerful, cousin,' says Celia ; and Rosalind, in a transient 
gloom, is placed before us. Yet, in a moment, so strong 
is youth in her, she flashes into agreement with Celia's 
proposition to fly to the forest, and will suit her at all 
points like a man. An actress should take with her 
through the forest scenes this serious side of Rosalind's 
character; the dignity which even in her 'saucy' play 
ought to appear, her high sense of honour, her steady 
common-sense, this clearness of vision, this high resolve in 
sorrow; else her acting will miss half of Shakespeare's 
idea of Rosalind. 

But she does not allow her common-sense or her sadness 
in this first act to interfere with the affairs of love. There 
she lets Nature have her way, and slips into her love with 
delight; silent at first, but silent from inward pleasure. 
The joy of it uplifts her into a new-created world. And 



168 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

Orlando enters the gates of it along with her. And with 
the joy comes, of course, the SAveet and tender melancholy 
of love which knows not yet that it is returned, but is 
all but sure it is ; and which in puffs of alternate painful 
pleasure and pleasurable pain makes its own drama in 
the heart. A charming little dialogue tells the story — 

Eos. 0, how full of briers is this working-day world ! 

Cel. They are but burrs, cousin, thrown on thee in holiday foolery : 
if we walk not in the trodden paths, our very petticoats will catch 
them. 

Eos. I could shake them off my coat : these burrs are in my heart. 

Cel. Hem them away. 

Eos. I would try, if I could cry ' hem,' and have him. 

Cel. Come, come, wrestle with thy affections. 

Eos. ! they take the part of a better wrestler than myself ! 

We feel, through the light melancholy, her innate 
gaiety; and then out of the gaiety arises her serious 
fidelity to love. ' Yet,' says Celia, ' I hate not Orlando.' 

Eos. No, faith, hate him not, for my sake. 

Cel. Why should I not ? doth he not deserve well ? 

Eos. Let me love him for that ; and do you love him, because I do. 

It is a mingled skein — serious mirth, mirthful melancholy. 
But it is only untoward circumstance that weighs her down. 
When she is free in the forest where life and summer 
are wed, sure of Orlando whose verses she has found, in 
attire in which she can play with his love and go further 
in speech than a maiden can — her brightness, joyousness, 
her happy nature, mount and sing like a bird let loose 
from a cage. She is fresher than the dew in the forest, 
more glancing than the stream, and as wild in her grace 
as the wild rose that flings its branches everywhere ; yet, 
in her wildness is no extravagance, no rudeness, no want 
of harmony. 

With this grave, gay girlhood, with this beauty, she has 
also intellect and its charm. Celia has quite enough, but 
Rosalind overbrims with it. It is a natural growth in her, 



AS YOU LIKE IT 109 

and comes of her own divine vitality. It illuminates her 
argument with Celia on the gifts of Nature and Fortune, 
but there Celia is as quick-minded as she. It is only when 
she gets to the forest, and is warmed by meeting Orlando, 
that it develops into sparkle of wit, into power, insight, 
and good sense. And it adds to her grace, beauty and 
entangling charm a gaiety that never makes mistakes, 
a clearness of atmosphere in which what is foolish or 
merely fantastic, and all speech which is not true or 
is masked to deceive the world, are revealed, shamed, 
and undone. When Jaques, attracted by her brightness, 
airs his melancholy before her, she puts him to flight with 
a luminous good sense — 

Jaq. I prithee, pretty youth, let me be better acquainted with thee. 

Eos. They say you are a melancholy fellow. 

Jaq. I am so ; I do love it better than laughing. 

Eos. Those that are in extremity of either are abominable fellows, 
and betray themselves to every modern censure worse than drunkards. 

Jaq. Why, 'tis good to be sad and say nothing. 

Eos. Why, then, 'tis good to be a post. 

Jaq. I have neither the scholar's melancholy, which is emulation ; 
nor the musician's, which is fantastical ; nor the courtier's, which is 
proud ; nor the soldier's, which is ambitious ; nor the lawyer's, which is 
politic ; nor the lady's, which is nice ; nor the lover's, which is all these :. 
but it is a melancholy of mine own, compounded of many simples, ex- 
tracted from many objects, and, indeed the sundry contemplation of my 
travels, in which my often rumination wraps me in a most humorous 
sadness. 

Eos. A traveller ! By my faith, you have great reason to be sad. I 
fear you have sold your own lands to see other men's ; then, to have 
seen much and to have nothing, is to have rich eyes and poor hands. 

Jaq. Yes, I have gained my experience. 

Eos. And your experience makes you sad ! I had rather have a fool 
to make me merry than experience to make me sad : and to travel for 
it too ! 

Enter Orlando. 

Orl. Good day, and happiness, dear Eosalind ! 

Jaq. Nay then, God be wi' you, an you talk in blank verse. 

And he leaves her in a huff of vanity, while Rosalind cries 
after him — 

Farewell, Monsieur Traveller ! Look you lisp, and wear strange 



170 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

suits, disable all the benefits of your own country, be out of love with 
your nativity, and almost chide God for making you that countenance 
you are, or I will scarce think you have swam in a gondola. 

Thus, her good sense unveils him. Again, when Silvius 
crouches under Phoebe's treatment of him, Rosalind is 
ashamed for the man, and she has no sympathy with 
the woman. She protects Silvius because he is faithful, 
for she sees good when it is there ; but she despises him 
for his weakness, and strikes hard on the weak spot. 
Celia pities him, ' Alas ! poor shepherd.' 

Eos. Do you pity him ? no, he deserves no pity. Wilt thou love 
such a woman? What, to make thee an instrument, and play false 
strains upon thee ! Not to be endured ! Well, go your way to her, for 
I see love hath made thee a tame snake. 

These are the kind of things which weight her wit, 
charm and joyousness, which add respect for her mental 
power to our pleasure in her naturalness, which make us 
think, with satisfied faith in its strength, of her woman- 
hood in contest with the future, and in triumph over it. 
0, fortunate Orlando ! 

In the third act she meets Orlando, and that is the 
centre of the plaj^. Meantime in the second act we are 
inside the forest, and meet its indwellers. Rosalind, Celia 
and Touchstone have found their way thither and meet 
Corin and Silvius. Corin is the honest labourer, old, 
tired, and practical, but who has had his day of love 
in youth and remembers it. This hallows his age, and 
makes it sweet with thought, for Shakespeare was too 
kindly to leave the old unblessed. Silvius seeks Corin's 
sympathy, for he has known the game and tenderness 
of love. To ask such sympathy from a shepherd, whose 
greatest pride now is ' to see his ewes graze and his 
lambs suck,' who is ' a true labourer,' seems strange, but 
in Shakespeare's affectionate regard, Corin, whenever he 
remembers that he was young, and that he loved, is 



AS YOU LIKE IT 171 

another man in that sweet air. And then both these lives 
of his, thinking together, make him say — ' that he that 
had learned no wit by nature nor art may complain of 
good breeding, or comes of a very dull kindred.' Such a 
one is ' a natural philosopher/ says Touchstone, who, while 
he plays his mocking wit on Corin, respects his honesty 
and sense. And Rosalind likes the old labourer, and he 
understands Rosalind. When he talks with her, he rises 
above his natural level of thought, so greatly does her pre- 
sence heighten and kindle whomsoever she touches. It is 
the Corin whom love plagued of old, who makes this speech 
when he calls Rosalind to see Silvius and Phcebe meeting — 

If you will see a pageant truly play'd, 
Between the pale complexion of true love 
And the red glow of scorn and proud disdain, 
Go hence a little, and I shall conduct you, 
If you will mark it. 

That is the kindling of Rosalind. Corin is breathing 
the poetic air of his youth. The years of long labour are 
forgotten in her presence. 

The episode of Silvius and Phoebe seems unnecessary. 
Its excision would leave the play untouched in interest. 
The only character it adds to is Rosalind's, and what it 
adds is scarcely worth adding. But it is amusing on the 
stage, and it enhances the pastoral and woodland element. 
It also fills up a gap in the action, and plays another tune 
than that played by Rosalind and Orlando. Shakespeare 
was now so brimming over with invention and life that 
I suppose he could not help these additions. There are 
artists who would become ill if they did not relieve them- 
selves of some of the host of conceptions which beset 
them and call aloud for form. This episode is fully and 
carefully worked, but it impresses one as an insertion. 

The little tale of Touchstone and Audrey might also have 
been left out without loss, and in itself it is disagreeable. 



172 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

Audrey is scarcely worth drawing, nor is her simplicity 
humorous except in contrast with Touchstone's cynical 
cleverness. The worst side of Touchstone appears in his 
relation to her, and it was a pity to lower his character. 
Perhaps Shakespeare felt that Touchstone — who is quite 
out of place in the forest — needed some pursuit, some 
amusement to vary a life which bored him ; and supplied 
him with a rustic maid to seduce, and a rustic lover to 
outrival. But the story is unnecessary. Touchstone is 
elsewhere quite sufficiently and agreeably drawn. 

Jaques, like Touchstone, is an invention of Shakespeare. 
He_dominates the second act. Too much has been made, 
I think, of the Duke's account of the past life of Jaques, 
as if Shakespeare intended him to be, here in the play, as 
ugly a character as he had been in the past. That is 
quite out of the question. Jaques has given up that dis- 
solute life, and shows no desire to return to it, even in 
thought. 

Some say that Jaques is the mere cynic, and his 
melancholy a bitter melancholy. He has the cynicism, 
they think, of the exhausted debauchee, who sees no good, 
or if he sees good, claims it as evil. Jaques does not 
deserve that accusation. If he has ever had cynicism 
in him he has now put it outside of him ; but he keeps 
it in his pocket, ready to put it on and off like his cap, 
as circumstance and fancy lead him. Nor is he a bad 
man now. No evil creature could laugh so heartily at 
Touchstone, or enjoy him so thoroughly. Touchstone is 
professionally what Jaques is actually,, the tired man of 
experience who mocks the world but who would like to 
find freshness of life again. 

Men who have lived the life of a libertine, as ' sensual as 
the brutish sting itself,' who have exhausted in it phy- 
sical and mental power, who have not given it up of their 
own will but because they could not go on with it, who 



AS YOU LIKE IT 173 

are consumed inwardly with regret of it — these men hate 
the world which can give them no more pleasure, envy 
those who enjoy life, and speak their hate with savage 
bitterness. The poison of asps is under their lips. 

Jaques is no such man. He envies no one. He is 
satirical, but not venomous. He is drawn to Rosalind and 
Orlando, though they will not have anything to do with 
his melancholy egotism, which, in their eyes, makes him 
wearisome. He seeks people who think, which the worn- 
out sensualist does not; who have what the Duke calls 
'matter' in them "for which the mere cynic does not 
care. He is really interested in the fate of the wounded 
deer, though he makes it a text for his moralising only, 
and will not stir from his couch of moss to help it. He is 
vain of his brooding thoughtfulness, and of course he has 
plenty to think of. His wild life has given him know- 
ledge of the purlieus of human nature, and their many 
problems. When he remembers all this matter of 
humanity, he is sullen, but not savage; and then old 
gentlemen, like the banished Duke, who are void of his 
storied experience of life, seek him out and taste through 
his moralising a pleasant savour of far-off naughtiness, 
of a world fuller and more varied than the forest. This 
was sure to please an exile from the world like the 
Duke, who, though he makes the best of the wild 
wood, will not be sorry to get back to the court. The 
good stuff of thought in Jaques somewhat excuses his 
egotism. But he is over-vain of it, and when Rosalind 
laughs at his apparent wisdom and tells him it is really 
folly, he is hurt ; and the hurt is the deeper, because an 
inward whisper tells him Rosalind is right. 

Jaques, as Shakespeare drew him, has left his sensual 
life before he was exhausted, while his body was in 
good trim, and his brain unworn ; left it because he was 
bored by it. The beginnings of satiety disgusted him, 



174 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

and he fled to the woods to think and moralise. And 
there, he used his thinking and moralising to exalt 
himself in his own eyes ; and became a ripe medlar of 
an egotist. And, naturally, the egotist proclaims his" 
superiority to others, and tries to prove it by mocking 
at men's folly, and by disclosing their evil. In this way 
he flatters himself that he is the cleanser of the 'foul 
body of the infected world,' if only they will receive his 
medicine. Then, that he should be melancholy belongs 
to the part he plays, because he thinks he sees so clearly 
how wrong, silly, and dirty is the world. 

This is not cynicism, but may become it. It is a self- 
created melancholy which runs into abuse of others in 
order to prove its own rightness ; and Orlando and Rosa- 
lind, with the clear eyes of youth, and unselfish because 
they love, see straight into Jaques, think him a poor 
creature, and he himself sometimes knows it. His 
melancholy is but the mask his egotism wears, But he 
wears it well, because he has brains, and because his 
original nature, which was kindly, saves him from com- 
plete bitterness. His indignation is never cruel, and his 
humour takes the venom out of his sarcasm. Nor is 
he devoid of imagination, that power too noble to lodge 
with a cynic. He is indeed more imaginative than 
Orlando, who is only imaginative because he is young 
and in love. Jaques is an artist in words. His moral- 
ising on the stag is done by one who had great experi- 
ence in putting things well. And as to his celebrated 
speech of the world as a stage — it is a model of form, 
splendidly representing an imaginative conception of all 
mankind. The one thing its imagination wants is passion, 
nor has it sympathy or the warmth of pity. But it is his 
cue, as one of the masquerade, as himself wearing a mask 
of scornful melancholy, to leave that out. Yet, deep- 
hidden in his soul, there may have been passion enough as 



AS YOU LIKE IT 175 

he declaimed with conventional grimness this picture of 
poor, foolish mankind strutting and fretting its hour 
away to end in 

Second childishness and mere oblivion, 

Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything. 

This was a thought which often troubled Shakespeare, 
But he fell back then on the ineradicable brightness and 
gaiety of his nature, and made Orlando and Rosalind and 
a thousand other happy creatures — and then he knew. 
Men have eyes to see in joy ; in half-cynic sorrow they are 
blind. Nor will Jaques ever see the world truly till he 
looks at it through the eyes of Rosalind. 

It seems probable that Shakespeare intended him to 
be cured, at least partly, before the end of the play. The 
snubbing, if I may use that word, he gets from Rosalind 
and then from Orlando ; the opposition of their natural- 
ness to his conventional sadness, of their freshness to his 
withered leafage, have done him good, lifted him out of 
his untruth, and made him fling away his mask in the 
fifth act. In that act there is no trace of cynicism in his 
talk. His enjoyment of Touchstone's ways is frank. He 
wishes the Duke to share it. Nor does he now turn the 
quaint humour of Touchstone, as he does in the previous 
acts, into food with which to feed his egotism. He will 
not yet go back to the world, but will seek the usurper 
who has taken on a religious life ; not himself to be a 
religious, but to suck some fresh experience — 

Out of these convertites 
There is much matter to be heard and learn'd. 

And there is no cynicism in the desire. I should not 
be surprised, if, a few years hence, when Rosalind and 
Orlando are comfortably settled, Jaques were to visit 
them, in an excellent humour, and laugh away some days 
in memory of his follies in the forest. 



176 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

Touchstone is the professional humorist, the court- 
jester, the Fool of mediseval society, who 'uses his folly 
as a stalking horse, and under the presentation of that, 
shoots his wit.' His conventional wit is set over against 
the natural wit of Rosalind and is conquered by it. In 
his encounter with her, he is reduced to silence ; but he 
expresses his defeat with charm. 'You have said; but 
whether wisely or no, let the forest judge.' Outside of 
his profession, he is a ' human person. 5 He is gentle with 
Rosalind. He loves Celia, and would go over the world 
with her. He is faithful as the day to her and Rosalind. 
When he is alone, he basks in the sun, and rails at 
Fortune to amuse himself. Then Jaques comes upon 
him, and he detects Jaques as quickly as Rosalind, and 
without saying anything about what he detects, plays 
on him, parodies his melancholy, and laughs at him. 
Jaques describes him, and does not understand what he 
describes — 

And then he drew a dial from his poke, 

And, looking on it with lack-lustre eye, 

Says very wisely, ' It is ten o'clock ; 

Thus may -we see,' quoth he, ' how the world wags : 

'Tis but an hour ago since it was nine, 

And after one hour more 'twill be eleven ; 

And so, from hour to hour we ripe and ripe, 

And then from hour to hour we rot and rot, 

And thereby hangs a tale.' 

And Jaques, in his vanity, does not know that Touch- 
stone has penetrated him, and is mocking him. So much 
wiser is the fool than the half-embittered sage. 

Touchstone has some learning, and uses it to overawe 
the simple forest-folk. And it gives him pleasure to 
play with them and puzzle them. His talk with Corin is 
full of wit which Corin does not understand, but which 
is a delight to the audience, who see his real wisdom peep- 
ing out under the mask of his folly. With Rosalind, he is 
not foolish, he is gay. The real man is, as usual, drawn 



AS YOU LIKE IT 177 

out by her. With Audrey, he lets the worst of him appear, 
but with all these folk he is not professional ; only a 
simple mocker, not from any real cynicism, but for the 
pleasure of mocking. It is only, at the end, when he is 
brought before the Duke and the lords and pages, in the 
air of a court again, that he becomes, as he was in the first 
act, the professional fool again ; and is swift, sententious, 
fantastic, inventive of the pleasant statement of the lie 
seven times removed, and the quarrel on the seventh 
cause. All he says now is said by the pure jester who 
lives to make idle society laugh. The forest episode 
in his life is over, and he is glad of it. 

And now, in conclusion, we get back to Rosalind and 
Orlando, or indeed to Rosalind alone. With her arrival 
in the forest, her discovery of Orlando's presence, and 
the freedom to play with him which her man's garb gives 
her, all her sadness vanishes, all her nature expands. She 
opens like a rose in the sun. The forest is her fitting 
home. Its wild- wood freedom is in her heart, its beauty 
in her eyes, its summer in her temper. Gay delight in 
life, enraptured girlhood made tender by love, are at their 
height in her; the bubbling spring is not more happy. 
In this exalting of her nature, her wit and wisdom are also 
exalted. Her wit is more brilliant every hour ; her wisdom 
glances more brightly through her wit ; and she uses both, 
in her sportiveness, to heighten the waywardness with 
which she adorns the passing hour. ' My Rosalind is wise,' 
says faithful Orlando. ' Or else,' Rosalind answers, 

she could not have the wit to do this : the wiser, the way warder : 
make the doors upon a woman's wit, and it will out at the casement ; 
shut that, and 'twill out at the keyhole : stop that, 'twill fly with the 
smoke out at the chimney. 

There 's no play so delightful as hers with Orlando 
through these two acts. It would be folly to describe it 
or analyse it, for it may be read ; and it is as simple as it 

M 



178 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

is charming. Light as it is, light as the flight of a swallow, 
it flies above a deep nature. The moment she parts from 
Orlando, she shows to Celia the depth of her love. I 
tell thee, Aliena, I cannot be out of sight of Orlando ; 1 11 
go And a shadow and sigh till he comes.' When she 
thinks he is wounded, she swoons ; and then, having had 
play enough, she brings her love to full fruition. She 
knows when to stop — 

Eos. Why then, to-morrow I cannot serve your turn for Rosalind. 

Orl. I can lire no longer by thinking. 

Ros. I will weary you then no longer with idle talking. 

And she winds up her own love, and all the loves of the 
play, and dissolves all the quarrel, by disclosing herself to 
her father and Orlando — 

To you I give myself, for I am yours. 

Nor can I put in better words her charm, her nature — 

the resolver of all tangles, the uplifter of all that is best 

in each character, the queen of wit and love, than in 

the verse Orlando wrote of her — 

Why should this a desert be ? 
For it is unpeopled ? No ; 
Tongues I '11 hang on every tree, 
That shall civil sayings show. 
Some, how brief the life of man 
Runs his erring pilgrimage, 
That the stretching of a span 
Buckles in his sum of age ; 
Some, of violated vows 
'Twixt the souls of friend and friend : 
But upon the fairest boughs, 
Or at every sentence' end, 
Will I Rosalinda write ; 
Teaching all that read to know 
The quintessence of every sprite 
Heaven would in little show. 
Therefore Heaven Nature charg'd 
That one body should be fill'd 
With all graces wide enlarg'd : 
Nature presently distill'd 



AS YOU LIKE IT 179 

Helen's cheek, but not her heart, 

Cleopatra's majesty, 

Atalanta's better part, 

Sad Lucretia's modesty. 

Thus Rosalind of many parts 

By heavenly synod was devis'd, 

Of many faces, eyes, and hearts, 

To have the touches dearest priz'd. 

Heaven -would that she these gifts should have. 

And I to live and die her slave. 



VII 
MACBETH 

This play, it is concluded, was begun in 1605 and finished 
the following year. It existed only in manuscript till 
1623, when it was printed, seven years after Shakespeare's 
death. Owing to this, it had suffered grievously. There 
is perhaps no text among Shakespeare's plays more corrupt. 
Moreover, passing in acting copies through so many repre- 
sentations, it may have been abbreviated here or enlarged 
there, and there seem to be indications of such work in 
the text that we possess. Shakespeare, however, followed 
fairly the general lines of the story as he took it from 
Holinshed's Chronicle of Scottish History. The variations 
and the additional matter he introduced, as for example 
the character of Banquo, suggest his desire to please 
-Tames I. The part the witches are made to bear is perhaps 
an indirect compliment to the king's views on witch- 
craft. Then Banquo was said to be an ancestor of James, 
and Banquo is the noblest character in the play. James 
was quite vain enough to attribute to himself the excel- 
lences of Banquo, and the vision of Banquo's descendants 
carrying twofold balls and treble sceptres, which predicts 
for James's gratification the union of Scotland with Ireland 
and England, underlines the symbolic identification of the 
character of Banquo with that of James. It seems an 
incredible resemblance, but a poet who, like Shakespeare, 
was also a practical man of the world, may well be excused 
for this. He was a manager as well as a dramatist, and 
it was the habit of the day to flatter kings — so settled a 



MACBETH 181 

habit that our only wonder is that it scarcely appears in 
Shakespeare. There is nothing in his work which re- 
sembles the fulsome adoration of kinghood which we 
find in the dramatists who continued to write after his 
death. h 

It is said that Act I. Sc. ii. and Sc. hi. up to tk^arrival 
of Macbeth and Banquo on the stage are by another hand. 
In that case the last words of the witches in Act i. Sc. i. 

Fair is foul, and foul is fair, 

Hover through the fog and filthy air. 

would be immediately followed by Macbeth's first phrase, 

So foul and fair a day I have not seen. 

And the catching repetition of the thought and the 
adjectives would not be ineffective on the stage, and for 
the audience. Moreover, if the play were to be swift, as 
Shakespeare, when it finally left his hands, certainly 
meant it to be, this arrangement, which omits the scene 
of the bleeding sergeant and the second appearance of the 
witches, would create at the very beginning an impression 
of headlong speed, as if the dramatist were being driven 
by a ' fine frenzy ' to hurry, incapable of delay, to the 
terrible centre of the main event. 

I should not regret the omission ol Sc. ii., which is in 
parts unworthy of Shakespeare, but I should be led with 
great difficulty to think that he did not write the greater 
part at least of the rhyming dialogue of the witches at 
the beginning of Sc. iii. I see no poetical reason for 
allotting it to another hand. On the contrary, there are 
phrases in it which belong to his imagination, and cry 
out to us, 'We are his only.' 

However, this Sc. ii. and the witch-part in Act. I. Sc. iii. 
delay the play, if it was intended to leap swiftly without 
Shakespeare's usual preparation into the heart of the 
tragedy. They seem like a remnant of a longer play. 



182 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

The same may be said of Act iv. Sc. iii., 'before the 
king's palace in England/ where Malcolm and Macduff 
converse. Malcolm's trial of Macduff's honesty by repre- 
senting himself as a lustful, avaricious, virtueless prince, 
and asking if such a one is fit to govern, is quite unneces- 
sary to the movement of the play, and delays its speed. 
The episode concerning the king's evil is equally needless 
and delaying. Both are out of the atmosphere of the rest 
of the drama ; as if they belonged to a play written 
originally at much greater length. It is not till the 
arrival of Ross on the scene that we feel ourselves again 
in the sweeping wind of the action of the tragedy. 

These two parts of the play suggest that Shakespeare 
did originally write Macbeth at greater length, and then, 
taking out all that delayed it, clasped the rest together 
into the concentrated rush of the drama as we possess it. 
In that case Sc. ii. would be the amalgamation, perhaps 
by another hand, of two or three slow-moving scenes in 
which Shakespeare prepared for the main event. Were 
this so, it would account for the lines of fine poetry, 
plainly from Shakespeare's hand, which illuminate this 
scene. With regard to the English scene, it would, on 
this theory, be a remnant of the original play, not 
reduced, not brought closely together, left with all its 
loitering, and conceived in another and a quieter atmo- 
sphere. This theory is only conjecture, but it is perhaps 
worth a passing thought. 

Macbeth is now the shortest of the plays. Swiftness, 
every one says, is its main characteristic. We seem, 
especially if we leave out Act i. Sc. ii., to be caught up 
from the beginning into the skirts of a hurricane, then 
swept into its centre when Macbeth meets Lady Macbeth, 
whirled round and round in it, deafened and blinded by 
it all through the murderous night, kept in its tem- 
pestuous blast through the death of Banquo, the rising 



MACBETH 183 

of his ghost, the furious visit of Macbeth to the Weird 
Sisters, the slaughter of Macduff's wife and children — a 
tempest of guilt and blood. Nor even then, when all 
the slaughters are done, are we relieved from the 
oppression of the storm. Its full fury returns, not in 
outward crime, but in the hearts of the murderers — in 
the visions of Lady Macbeth, in the raging despair 
of Macbeth — till at last the whirlwind which has borne 
us with such terrible speed suddenly ceases with the life 
of him who has been its spirit. We have had scarcely 
time to breathe. Yet nine days are represented on the 
stage, and there have been intervals of many days. The 
days, however, make no matter. We are not involved in 
time as we read or listen to the play, but in that imagi- 
native realm in which a thousand years are as one day 
and one day as a thousand years. It is not so much 
events which we hear and see as the thoughts and 
passions of the soul of man, and especially of two souls 
who are driven headlong by proud ambition into the abyss. 
In this metaphysical world there is neither time nor place ; 
the outward crimes, sorrows, battles, are but shadows of 
the inward realities of which they are the dread result. 

The Weird Sisters who preside over the play as the 
ministers of evil are partly 'metaphysical,' as Coleridge, 
following Lady Macbeth's phrase of 'metaphysical aid,' 
justly called them. It has been said that Shakespeare 
meant them to be no more than the witches of his 
day as they were commonly conceived. This is quite 
incredible when we think of that high poetic genius in 
him which could not have left them unspiritualised by 
imagination, and which must have felt that these person- 
ages, if conceived only as the vulgar witches, would be 
below the dignity of his tragedy. It is also said that all 
that was not vulgar in them was in the soul of Macbeth, 
and not in them. That is a credible theory, but it is not 



184 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

borne out by the text ; and it seems to assert that Shake- 
speare did not believe in, or at least did not as a poet 
conceive of, spiritual creatures, other than ghosts, who 
dwelt in a world outside of humanity, and yet could touch 
it at intervals when certain conditions were fulfilled. 
These spiritual creatures, as he conceived them, had 
chiefly to do with nature ; were either embodiments of its 
elemental forces, or their masters. Such were Oberon 
and Ariel, but they had most to do with the beneficent 
forces of nature. Here the Weird Sisters command its 
evil forces. Whether Shakespeare believed in this half- 
spiritual world of beings, dwelling and acting in a sup- 
posed zone between us and the loftier spiritual world, 
and having powers over the natural world — I cannot 
tell, but at least he conceived this realm; and if he 
believed in it, there were hundreds of persons at his time 
who were with him in that belief, as there are numbers 
now who share in it, in spite of science. I do not think, 
then, that the spiritual part of his conception of the 
witches was intended by him to exist solely in the mind 
of Macbeth. On the contrary, I hold that it is in- 
credible Shakespeare should have taken up witches into 
his tragedy and left them as James I. and the rest of 
the world commonly conceived them. His imagination 
was far too intense, his representing power much too 
exacting, to allow him to leave them unidealised. It is 
true he kept their vulgar elements for the sake of the 
common folk who did not think; but for those who did, 
Shakespeare unvulgarised the witches. 

They materialise themselves only for their purpose of 
temptation; their normal existence is impalpable, invis- 
ible, unearthly. When they vanish Banquo cries 

The earth hath bubbles as the water has, 
And these are of them. Whither are they vanished ? 
Macb. Into the air, and what seem'd corporal melted 
As breath into the wind. 



MACBETH 185 

Elemental beings ! inhabiting the world of nature be- 
yond our senses, from whose evil will the limits of our 
perception defend us. Here Shakespeare has made 
them, on one side of their being, the comrades or im- 
pellers of the destroying forces of nature. They meet 
in thunder, lightning, and in rain. They make storms ; 
they preside over the hurly-burly of the battle. ' I con- 
jure you,' cries Macbeth, giving them, as the Norsemen 
to their witches, all power over destructive tempest, 

I conjure you, by that which you profess, — 

Howe'er you come to know it, — answer me ; 

Though you untie the winds and let them fight 

Against the churches ; though the yesty waves 

Confound and swallow navigation up ; 

Though bladed corn be lodg'd and trees blown down ; 

Though castles topple on their warders' heads ; 

Though palaces and pyramids do slope 

Their heads to their foundations ; though the treasure 

Of Nature's germens tumble all together, 

Even till destruction sicken ; answer me 

To what I ask you. 

These are their works and ways in nature, in dreadful 

gaiety of destruction. 

But the witches are much more than creatures who 

have power over nature. They have influence also 

on the soul, but only on the soul that has admitted 

evil to dwell in it. When the soil is tainted their 

poisonous seeds take root. When a man has already 

sheltered a temptation they come to him charged with 

fresh temptation, and hurry the already cherished evil 

into outward execution of it. They master the thoughts 

of Macbeth because they are in tune with them. 1 They 

1 They are the servants of a mistress whose business and pleasure is to 
do evil. Hecate is ' the close contriver of all harms,' who urges by ' the 
glory of her art' the wicked man to ' confusion,' to a ' dismal and a fatal 
end.' She, like the Weird Sisters, belongs partly to the vnlgar witch- world, 
but chiefly to the supernatural world of evil powers. She leads Macbeth 
into his ruin by a ' false security.' She can distil a magic drop from the 
corner of the moon. And her delight is in the destruction of Macbeth — 
soul and body. 



186 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

have no influence on Banquo, who is innocent of wrong. 
Nowhere in Shakespeare is a more subtle delineation of 
the effect of suggested evil on two souls, one in sympathy 
with evil, the other not, than there is in the scene between 
Macbeth and Banquo after the disappearance of the 
witches. 

Then, again, they hand on their power of doubling evil 
in the evil soul through Macbeth's letter to Lady Macbeth. 
The murder they have half- suggested to Macbeth jumps 
with the murder in her heart. She recalls their prophecy 
of the crown for Macbeth when she receives his letter, 
and conceives at once the murderous means to reach 
the throne. The golden round, she cries, shall be thine 

Which fate and metaphysical aid doth seem 
To have thee crowned withal. 

She feels the wicked influence of the Weird Sisters, though 
she has never seen them. They seem to her to be the 
materialised images of those malignant ministers of evil 
she invokes to help her to her fierce and bloody aim. 

Come, you spirits 
That tend on mortal thoughts ! unsex me here, 
And fill me from the crown to the toe top full 
Of direst cruelty ; make thick my blood ; 
Stop up the access and passage to remorse, 
That no compunctious visitings of nature 
Shake my fell purpose, nor keep peace between 
The effect and it. Come to my woman's breasts, 
And take my milk for gall, you murdering ministers, 
Wherever in your sightless substances 
You wait on nature's mischief! 

Evil to evil ! the witch-suggestions come home and 
press for execution. This, then, is Shakespeare's con- 
ception of the Weird Sisters — not only creatures that 
have power over the natural forces which do harm to 
men, but also creatures that have a spiritual power over 
the soul which has cherished guilty thoughts. Then, 
Shakespeare, from the common notions of witchcraft, 



MACBETH 187 

added to this conception, (since he was a playwright,) 
the cave, the cauldron, the gruesome ingredients in the 
wicked broth, the wild and withered aspect of the 
Weird Sisters, the choppy finger and the skinny lip, the 
grim mirth of these inhuman Things. These additions 
did not interfere with the spiritual conception. They 
belonged to the witches only when they materialised 
themselves for a material purpose. And, as I think, no 
one despised them more than the witches themselves. 
Indeed, these material adjuncts were illusions. They 
vanish with those that formed them into the filthy air 
from whence they came. 

The play begins with their appearance on the dark 
moorland near Forres which the wild weather and fire 
have blasted, and over which, as Macbeth and Banquo 
enter, a storm is passing with thunder, lightning, and rain. 
The day has been fair before their coming, now it is foul, 
and in the foul weather are those who have made it to 
suit their wicked work. Thus we are brought into the 
dark atmosphere of the play, as dark without, as it is 
within the souls of the characters. Night and tempest 
pervade the play. Duncan dies in a storm; Banquo 
perishes in the night, in the night his ghost rises ; Lady 
Macbeth walks with her conscience by night and dies 
before the dawn. Macbeth and she slay their guest in 
the night, and cry to the night, at every dark deed they 
do, to hide their guilt, and to assist it. Only one other 
element of imagination is stronger in the play — that 
which drenches it with blood. Every scene is crimson 
with it ; it is like the garments in Isaiah's battle, rolled in 
blood. Macbeth's imagination incarnadines with blood 
the multitudinous seas. No Arabian perfume will 
sweeten away from Lady Macbeth's hand the smell of 
Duncan's blood. 

Tempest and terror, blasting lightning, and everywhere 



188 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

* u he scent and sight of blood, are the outward image of 
the inward life in the Weird Sisters and the murderers. 
This dreadful darkness of the play, spiritual and physical, 
is deepened at the beginning by the supernatural pro- 
phecies which contain in them the slaughter of the 
king. Macbeth's soul is at one with the tempest and the 
blasted heath, and the supernatural cry. To Banquo 
the day is the ordinary Highland day, and the witches 
are not supernatural. He is the same when he leaves 
the heath as when he entered it. Macbeth is not. 
There is that now in his soul which drives him as 
hunger drives a beast of prey. He carries it with him 
through his interview with the king, where its urging 
is quickened by the king appointing his son heir to the 
crown; where its temptation is kindled into action by 
Duncan's saying that he will stay the night at Inverness. 
The opportunity has come. He rides in front of the king 
with murder in his heart. 

Stars, hide your fires ! 
Let not light see my black and deep desires. 

The dark castle rises before us, and within it, waiting 
in the gloom, murder in every vein, the rider's wife, settled 
into grim resolve to press on him the finish of the thought 
with which he rides. And behind rides through the 
soft afternoon, pleasure and trust in his heart, their mur- 
dered man. The evening is calm and lovely when he 
arrives. Duncan and Banquo speak of its beauty and 
peace. Shakespeare loves these contrasts. Night falls, 
and with the night a terror-striking tempest invades the 
sky, maddening both men and beasts. Lamentings are 
heard in the air, strange screams of death ; the obscure 
bird clamours the live-long night ; the earth is feverous 
and shakes. A falcon, towering in her pride of place, is 
by a mousing owl hawked at and killed ; Duncan's horses 
devour one another. Shakespeare fearlessly piles terror 



MACBETH 189 

on terror; nature herself, as in all his plays, in aristo- 
cratic sympathy, celebrates with earthquake and wreck 
the death of princes. But there is no outward terror so 
deep as that in the soul of Macbeth in the castle court 
before he goes to his slaying, and in the soul of his wife 
as she waits, every sense attent, in the same court for 
his return, I doubt if in all literature there is any silent 
and whispering fear to be compared with that which 
thrills the air in this scene when Macbeth descends the 
stair with his bloody hands, and she welcomes him with 
question on question, and wears away his misery with 
bold encouragement. We are so enthralled, that we start 
with as much terror as they, when the knocking comes at 
the south entry. The awe of crime, the darkening ven- 
geance of coming justice, the devastation of the soul by 
fear, the boldness of accomplished sin reacting against 
fear, the awful, silent solitude of the mind after the 
irreparable deed — 

Wake Duncan with thy knocking ! I would thou couldst ! 

rise out of the words of the dialogue like phantoms. This 
is the true supernatural. 

The knocking awakes the Porter, round whose speech 
so much controversy has taken place. I cannot see why 
it should not be from Shakespeare's hand. It seems, 
indeed, to jar with the tragic height of the last scene. 
But Shakespeare was not only an idealist in his work, 
but also a bold realist ; and it is one of his excellences as 
a dramatist that his most ideal representations rest on a 
basis of reality. Even in the tragic height of passion in 
the last scene, there are such touches of close reality as 
these — 

retire we to our chamber ; 
A little water clears us of this deed ; 

Get on your nightgown, lest occasion call us, 
And show us to be watchers. 



190 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

With such realism underlying the ideal representation of 
the passion and thoughts in the murderers, the rude 
realism of the Porter is not out of harmony ; nor is the 
audacious representation of his coarse sensualism, mixed 
as it is with the bold humour of a drunkard, apart from 
the savage temper of a time in which the murder of 
Duncan was possible. There is nothing in his talk and 
shaping which injures the dramatic impression of the 
whole. Nay, I am not sure that his total ignorance of 
what has been done, and the lightness of his talk with 
Macduff and Lennox, does not make, dramatically, the 
deed which has been done more ghastly to the audience. 
They see, behind the rough, ignorant talk, the bloody 
room and the murdered men. 

Then, the Porter's soliloquy, his fancy of himself as 
porter of Hellgate ; his inventive conversation with those 
who seek admittance into hell; his sudden, drunken 
turn that he is mistaken ; the place is too cold for hell ; 
his disquisition on the effects of drink ; his sudden leap 
into poetic imagination — 'that go the primrose way to 
the everlasting bonfire ' — are all in Shakespeare's manner 
and invention. 1 I do not believe there was another 
Elizabethan dramatist who could have written this. 

Dramatically considered, the whole passage down to 
the entrance of Macbeth lowers the pitch of the last 
scene, and wisely. It enables Shakespeare to climb 
easily, and with gradation, through the heightening 
description of the storm of the night, to another climax 
— the great scene of the discovery of the murder of 
Duncan. There is nothing in the play which is more fit! 

1 Shakespeare had used this thought before. The clown in All's Well 
that Ends Well tells Lafeu— 

I am for the house with the narrow gate, which I take to be too little for pomp 
to enter : some that humble themselves may ; but the many will be too chill and 
tender, and they '11 be for the flowery way that leads to the broad gate and the 
great fire. 



MACBETH 191 

to the moment and finer in execution than the shouting 
of Macduff to the sleepers in the castle ; 

Awake ! awake ! 
Eing the alarum bell. Murder and treason ! 
Banquo and Donalbain ! Malcolm ! awake ! 
Shake off' this downy sleep, death's counterfeit, 
: And look on death itself ! up, up, and see 

The great doom's image ! Malcolm ! Banquo ! 
' As from your graves rise up, and walk like sprites, 
To countenance this horror ! Ring the bell. 

One after another, with dramatic effect carefully 
arranged for each, the main characters now rush in and fill 
the court of the castle : Lady Macbeth, Banquo, Macbeth 
and Lennox again, Malcolm and Donalbain. There is that 
which is terrible in Lady Macbeth's phrase when Macduff 
cries to Banquo, ' Our royal master 's murdered ' ! 

Woe, alas ! 
What ! in our house ? 

and in Banquo's answer — ' Too cruel anywhere.' There is 
that which is still more terrible in the awful change, on 
which I must hereafter dwell, in Macbeth's character, in 
the cool, deliberate hypocrisy of his temper, in the well- 
sustained apartness from the crime, the poetic turn, as of 
an orator over the honoured dead, of all he says — 

Had I but died an hour before this chance 

I had liv'd a blessed time ; for, from this instant, 

There 's nothing serious in mortality, 

All is but toys ; renown and grace is dead, 

The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees 

Is left this vault to brag of. 

The difference of the temper of the character who 
makes these fine phrases from his temper of the night 
of the murder is immense. It is as firm, as settled, as 
cool, as it was wavering, hot and fearful. Nothing but 
what is supernatural can shake it again. 

The centre of the play has now come. Macbeth has 
reached the crown. As yet he has not begun to fall. His 



192 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

fall begins with the murder of Banquo. The preparation 
for that begins the third act ; and Banquo's speech, which 
introduces it, makes clear the danger he is to Macbeth, 
and motives his murder. Macbeth's soliloquy reveals this 
fear, and, to knit the future to the past, Shakespeare again 
brings in the prophecy of the witches as still exercising its/ 
evil power over the soul of Macbeth. ' Banquo's children 
shall be kings. It shall not be. He and his son shall die.' 
The interview with the murderers in its chill unflinching 
wickedness is not half so dreadful as the interview with 
his wife that follows it, where he is ready to dissolve the 
whole frame of things rather than not secure himself in 
his seat, where he thinks of the death of Duncan as a 
mercy to Duncan, now relieved from all the distress and 
trouble of the world. 

But let the frame of things disjoint, both the worlds suffer, 

Ere we will eat our meal in fear, and sleep 

In the affliction of these terrible dreams 

That shake us nightly. . Better be with the dead, 

"Whom we, to gain our peace, have sent to peace, 

Than on the torture of the mind to lie 

In restless ecstasy. Duncan is in his grave ; 

After life's fitful fever he sleeps well ; 

Treason has done his worst : nor steel, nor poison, 

Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing 

Can touch him further. 

'Be jocund,' he cries to her, in an appalling mirth; 
this night ' shall see a deed of dreadful note.' 

Be innocent of the knowledge, dearest chuck, 
Till thou applaud the deed. 

An awful partnership ! 

Banquo is slain. It is the middle of the third act, and 
the end of that central period of the play during which 
Macbeth has kept his sovereign place. From that 
moment his doom darkens down day after day till it is 
accomplished. 



MACBETH 193 

The conduct of the play has been, up to this point, my 
consideration. I turn now to the main characters ; and as 
Banquo drops here out of the play, I take him first. There 
could be no better foil than he to Macbeth. It is against 
ius white background that Macbeth stands out blacker 
than night. He is, by Macbeth's own testimony, as brave 
as Macbeth, as good a soldier. He does not care for money 
or high place, but he does care for a soldier's fame. No 
jealousy of Macbeth corrodes his soul, nor has he any 
suspicion at first of evil thought in his comrade. Good 
himself, all are good to him, till their guilt is clear. 
Without ambition for himself, he is yet in the simplest 
way pleased frankly with the notion of his descendants 
being kings, but his sensitive conscience forces him to 
distrust this prophecy of the witches. He feels, by this 
sensitiveness? that they are evil, and he rests on the truism 
— that from evil arises no good. Only once afterwards 
does the prophecy enter his mind. He has put it aside. 1 
Because of this alert distrust of evil, he warns Macbeth 
against thinking of what the witches say. So delicate is 
his conscience that he prays, before he sleeps, against the 
cursed thoughts that nature, when the will is in abeyance, 
gives way to in repose. 

Banquo, with this keen, clear conscience, trembling to 
anger against even the suggestion of evil, is set over 
against Macbeth, whose only conscience is his sense of 
honour. And that gives way after a struggle at the call 
of his ambition. But Banquo's sense of a soldier's honour 
is backed up by the strength of his conscience; and 



1 When he finds (Act in.) that Macbeth has gained all the Weird 
Women promised, but by the foulest play, he thinks again of their 
prophecy. They have told truth to Macbeth. ' They may have told 
truth to me. If so, my children will be kings.' There 's no evil in that 
thought, no selfishness. He would not play foully for any success. 
He thinks only of what will be when he is dead, of the honourable hope 
that he may father a great posterity. 'Tis an innocent thought. 

N 



194 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

when Macbeth tempts him with promises of greatness, lie 

answers — 

So I lose none 
In seeking to augment it, but still keep 
My bosom franchis'd, and allegiance clear, 
I shall be counselPd. 

Macbeth hears, and cannot endure this conscientious- 
ness. It is a ceaseless menace, and it settles Banquo's 
fate. Indeed, he is too good for a rough world; he is 
sure to perish in contact with an evil will. Along with 
this clear conscience is a clear intellect. They sometimes, 
,not always, go together. Here both, acting together, set 
free Banquo from superstition, and again put him into j 
contrast with Macbeth who is superstition's slave — a/ 
'contrast meant by Shakespeare. Banquo has no illusive 
dreams, sees no ghosts, has no supernatural terrors. He 
faces the witches boldly, and gives no credit to their 
prophecies. They may not be dwellers on the earth, 
but that is no matter. His soul is free from fear. He 
questions them as if they were natural. If they are 
supernatural, he will neither beg their favours nor their 
hate. When they vanish, he thinks his reason has been 
for a moment taken prisoner, so full of clear good 
sense is his mind. He argues that the devil cannot tell 
truth ; and when he finds that these evil ministers have 
told the fact as it is, his conscience helps his intellect to 
see the under- truth — that the fiend may tell what is true 
to betray us to ambition's harm — the very thing which 
at that moment is working in the mind of Macbeth. Of', 

course, after the murder of Duncan, Macbeth had to 

j 

\ get rid of this clear-sighted man, whose intelligence was ... 

I as dangerous as his conscience. 

Lastly, we have seen him only as the soldier of a rude 
age, with a conscience touched to finer issues than was 
common at the time. Shakespeare, to complete his sketch 
of a noble character, adds to it a love of natural beauty, 



MACBETH 195 

a tender observation of things delicate. Banquo com- 
bines with his sensitiveness of conscience sensitiveness to 
beauty. We expect from Duncan's gentle character these 
gentle words — 

This castle hath a pleasant seat ; the air 
Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself 
Unto our gentle senses. 

But we scarcely expect from Banquo those fine perceptive 
verses which reveal how often he had observed and loved 
the fair things of the outward world : 

This guest of summer, 
The temple-haunting martlet, does approve 
By his lov'd mansionry that the heaven's breath 
Smells wooingly here : no jutty, frieze, 
Buttress, nor coign of vantage, but this bird 
Hath made his pendent bed and procreant cradle : 
Where they most breed and haunt, I have observ'd 
The air is delicate. 

It is a lovely passage, done with Shakespeare's most 
magical finger. He draws it forth from the high re- 
cesses of Banquo's soul, and it belongs to his careful 
purity. Compare it with what Lady Macbeth and Mac- 
beth, charged with the dark thoughts in their souls, see in 
nature. She cries 

The raven himself is hoarse 
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan 
Under my battlements. 

Macbeth, planning the murder of Banquo in his black 
soul, sees all things black. 

Come, seeling night, 
Scarf up the tender eye of pitiful day, 
And with thy bloody and invisible hand 
Cancel and tear to pieces that great bond 
Which keeps me pale ! Light thickens, and the crow 
Makes wing to the rooky wood ; 
Good things of day begin to droop and drowse, 

The only point at which Banquo and Macbeth are at 
one is, that both are good soldiers, brave, and jealous of 



196 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

the point of honour ; but Banquo's honour, being united 
to an active conscience, remains untainted; while Mac- 
beth's breaks down fatally. 

Macbeth is the bold soldier of a rude time. We must 
not apply to his actions, if we would conceive him as 
Shakespeare conceived him, the standards of our time, 
especially in the matter of killing. He was accustomed 
to slaughter, and the mere slaying of Duncan, Banquo, 
and Fleance was nothing to him. When a man stood 
opposed to the aims of a soldier of that date, unless he 
had like Banquo a delicate conscience, he slew his enemy 
at once, in the shortest and surest way. Stone dead has 
no fellow. Killing was Macbeth's trade ; assassination of 
an obstacle caused him no remorse. But though mere 
killing or murder did not trouble his mind, it did trouble 
him when it violated his code of honour. The killing of 
Duncan, under the circumstances, was such a violation. 
In that famous speech beginning 

If it were done when 'tis done, 

he does not dwell on the guilt of murder, but first on the 
penalties which follow it. These he fears ; if there were 
no punishment, no return of blood for blood, here on this 
earth, it is little I would think of the life to come. I 'd 
take the risk of that. Then, secondly, he dwells on the 
dishonour to him of the murder. To slay one who is in 
my castle in double trust violates all the laws of honour. 
Duncan is my kinsman, I am his subject, and he has 
done me kindness. Duncan is my guest, under the shelter 
of my roof. This is not the cry of conscience, but of the 
common code of honour. Then he thinks again of the 
consequences. Duncan has been so good, so gentle a king 
that his virtues will plead like trumpet-tongued angels 
against my deed, and pity for his fate awake the tears of 
the world. This too is not his personal conscience speak- 



MACBETH 197 

ing; it is partly that it jars honour to slay so excellent a 
chief, and partly it is fear of the results. 

This sense of honour in Macbeth, frequently a man's 
only conscience, disappears altogether after the murder 
of Duncan. He has irredeemably violated it, and it never 
has another shred of influence upon him. Moreover, since 
nothing isolates a man like the loss of honour, Macbeth is 
henceforth separated by Shakespeare from the whole of 
his world, except from his comrade in the murder. He is 
isolated also from his earlier self, from the honourable 
soldier that he was ; he is an outlaw to himself. 
To know my deed were best not know myself. 

And the loss of his honour makes him absolutely reckless. 
No crime, after his great crime, in which he murdered his 
own honour, seems more than a trifle to him. He dooms; 
in savage petulance, the wife and children of Macduff to 
an innocent and useless death. 

On the whole, if we would see Macbeth clearly we must 
not dwell on his conscience, of which so much is made, 
but on his sense of honour. They are, of course, related 
to one another, but the realm of each is quite distinct. 
Were it conscience that troubled him he would have been 
pictured by Shakespeare as a victim of remorse, like Lady 
Macbeth. There is no remorse in him, but there is the 
wild, indifferent recklessness which comes to one who is 
conscious that he has shut himself out from his fellows by 
a fatal act of dishonour. And when we think of this, 
that pathetic statement of his case in Act v., which is 
not at all the cry a remorseful conscience would make, 
seems naturally in' harmony with his self-consciousness. 
It is what a dishonoured gentleman, even now, might say. 

I have liv'd long enough : my way of life 
Is fall'n into the sear, the yellow leaf ; 
And that which should accompany old age, 
As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends, 



198 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

I must not look to have ; but, in their stead, 
Curses, not loud but deep, mouth-honour, breath 
Which the poor heart would fain deny, and dare not. 

Again, Macbeth is described by a modern critic as the 
type of the practical man, not imaginative; who knows 
himself; who knows his purpose, and goes straight to it 
by the shortest way. I do not think any description can 
be further from the reality, before his murder of Duncan. 
Even after the murder this description is only partially 
true. I suppose his wife was aware of his character, and 
this was not her view of him. The very contrary was her 
experience. ' Infirm of purpose/ she cries, at the very top 
of the event, ' give me the daggers.' 

Art thou afeard 
To be the same in thine own act and valour 
As thou art in desire ? Would'st thou have that 
Which thou esteem'st the ornament of life 
And live a coward in thine own esteem, 
Letting ' I dare not ' wait upon ' I would ' 
Like the poor cat i' the adage ? 

This is not the swift-acting, practical man. He hovers 
to and fro ; now ambition seizes him, now fear. He wants 
much, but dreads to take the straight way to it. He's 
soft by nature in one part of him, and lets the weaker part 
of him tyrannise over his bolder thoughts. He needs his 
wife's quicker, bolder,, more practical nature to heighten 
him into audacious, rapid action. This is her view of his 
character; and till after the murder, it is the character 
Shakespeare meant him to have. That is plain from 
Lady Macbeth's description of him in her first speech 
in the play. 

Glainis thou art, and Cawdor ; and shalt be 

What thou art promis'd. Yet do I fear thy nature ; 

It is too full of the milk o' human-kindness 

To catch the nearest way ; thou wouldst be great, 

Art not without ambition, but without 

The illness should attend it ; what thou wouldst highly, 

That wouldst thou holily ; wouldst not play false, 



MACBETH 199 

And yet wouldst wrongly win ; thou ! dst have, great Glarnis, 

That which cries, ' Thus thou must do, if thou have it ' ; 

And that which rather thou dost fear to do 

Than wishest should be undone. Hie thee hither, 

That I may pour my spirits in thine ear, 

And chastise with the valour of my tongue 

All that impedes thee from the golden round, 

Which fate and metaphysical aid doth seem 

To have thee crown'd withal. 

All through the murder scene Macbeth remains this 
character. He wavers, through over-thinking of it, before 
the deed ; now cold, now all on fire. He needs his wife's 
scorn to spur him to the act. He piles up extravagant 
words about it till he feels himself that he is chilling by 
words his purpose. He loses his head in the horror of 
the murder, when it is done, considering it too deeply for 
sanity. His brain is sick ; every noise appals him. The 
blood of his hands seems to stain the universe. He is lost 
in fear ; he thinks he will never sleep again. His wife is 
tender to him, but is shamed for his white heart. This 
is not the practical, swift, purposeful man, but one wildly 
troubled by imagination, doubling and trebling, through a 
host of images, the terror and hate of what he has done. 

Imagination — that is his trouble ! I do not know 
whether this salient element in his character has been 
much dwelt on. It ought to be. We cannot understand 
Macbeth without realising it. Indeed, it is this lively, 
shaping, various imagination, continually multiplying new 
aspects of anything to be done, or that has been done, 
which is at the root of his hesitations, his fears, his out- 
bursts of agony. His wife has none of it, but brings her 
impulsive common-sense to meet it, check it, and dissolve 
it. Her cool reasoning face to face with the imagination 
which has overwhelmed his intellect is one of the most 
remarkable and dramatic contrasts Shakespeare has con- 
ceived. She pulls him out of fantasy into reality. He 
slips back ; she drags him out again. 



200 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

Macbeth, as Shakespeare saw him, was instinct with 
imagination. Had he not been a soldier and cousin of 
the king, had he lived in a less rude time, and in a 
private gentleman's condition, he might have had the 
poet's name. Everything he says in this play is poeti- 
cally said, cast in keen imagination's mould, thought 
and form equally good; and rising easily, at times of 
great emotion, into words equal to the emotion. The 
conception, for example, of all the oceans of the world 
incarnadined by the blood on his hand is equally mag- 
nificent in passion, conception, and execution. Even his 
common phrases are couched in poetry. 1 The ideal his 
imagination laid before him was to be king, to wear the 
golden top of sovereignty. In comparison with this ideal 
and its imaginative charm, all its material advantages 
were as nothing in his mind. Lady Macbeth alludes to 
these. He does not. 

Before, during, and after the murder, this imagination, 
blown into a white heat by the intense passion of the 
hour, is so alive and powerful that it doubles the horror 
of the murder. It lifts it out of a vulgar assassination 
into the archet;fpe of all terrible, soul-shaking murders. 
It flies from heaven to e^rth and down to hell. It sees an 
air-drawn dagger, ' a metaphysical dagger of the working 
soul,' pointing him to Duncan's chamber. It blackens all 
Nature with his thought. It drags in the remotest things 
to increase the terror of the present — Hecate, Tarquin 
whose strides towards his design are like those of withered 
murder with her sentinel the wolf. In the very midst of 
his slaughter he hears a voice, ' Sleep no more ! Macbeth 

1 Can such things be 

And overcome us like a summer's cloud, 
Without our special wonder ? 

Of course, as in tragic work, the other characters speak poetically, but 
none of them approach in speech the continuity, the depth, and the 
passion of Macbeth's imagination. ' 



MACBETH 201 

does murder sleep,' and at the word his imagination takes 
fire, and runs away from the horror of the moment 
into all the poetry of sleep — strange island of peaceful 
imagination in this sea of murder — 

the innocent sleep, 
Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleave of care, 
The death of each day's life, sore labour's bath, 
Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course, 
Chief nourisher in life's feast, — 

There speaks the natural poet. Lady Macbeth, who has 
none of this imagination, cannot comprehend this divaga- 
tion. ' What do you mean ?' she says. ' Who was it that 
thus cried ? ' He is the same throughout. He adds 
more than an imaginative, I may say an artist's, touch 
to "everything he says. Matter, passion, and form are 
equally good. He is always mixing up his deeds and 
himself with the whole of Nature. In his mind Nature, 
dark Nature, sympathises with him. The heavens, the 
solid earth, the sea, are companions of his thoughts. He 
makes them his by universalising himself into them, and 
with them — a common element in poets. Even at the 
end when, driven to bay, he feels that all is over, and 
meets his coming fate with reckless courage and weari- 
ness of life, he is still poetic in the hours of his lone- 
liness. Few soliloquies are richer in imagination and 
humanity than his are in the fifth act. 

We cannot understand Shakespeare's Macbeth till we 
realise this element of poetic imagination in him. It 
lifts him above the brutal murderer. Yet it makes 
his ruthlessness more abominable. The artist who is 
bloodthirsty and cruel is not unknown to history. Art 
and savagery are often ugly lovers. 

This great imaginative power in a rude and ignorant 
time, and in a man who had no natural opportunity of 
expressing it in its proper forms, was sure to have, as its 
child, not only superstition, which is ignorant imagination 



202 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

in a wrong place, but also the fears which accompany 
superstition. Shakespeare lays this deep in Macbeth's 
temperament. Its presence is one of the main keys to his 
thoughts and acts. Conscious of it himself, he describes 
its keen and nervous thrill of mingled curiosity and fear 
when he was a boy, even a man. 

The time has been my senses would have cool'd 
To hear a night-shriek, and my fell of hair 
Would at a dismal treatise rouse and stir 
As life were in 't. 

What seems supernatural sets at once his nerves into a 
storm. It appears strangely in a brave soldier, but there 
are many examples of this co-existence of physical courage 
and metaphysical terrors in the same man. We see how 
close the imaginative nerve-storm is to Macbeth, when 
the first suggestion of Duncan's murder makes his hair 
rise, and his heart knock at his ribs, against the use of 
nature. 

My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical, 
Shakes so my single state of man, that function 
Is smother'd in surmise, and nothing is 
But what is not. 

All the visible world has perished to him. Only the fierce 
invisible thought is real. So intensely strained is imagi- 
nation that it breaks into fear when the murder is 
at hand ; afraid as a child of his own fears. ' If we should 
fail,' he cries, almost like a coward. He sees the dagger 
he cannot feel marshalling him to murder. He sees it 
again black with gouts of blood. He thinks the stones 
of his castle will prate of his whereabout. He hears 
voices in the air. He is afraid to think of what he 
has done ; he dare not look upon it. His wife has no 
patience with his superstitious nerves. His eyes are 
those of a child, which, unchecked by reason, believe all 
they imagine they see. 



MACBETH 203 

The sleeping and the dead 
Are but as pictures : 'tis the eye of childhood 
That fears a painted devil. 

Into that grey world of the supernatural which some are 
said to see, Macbeth is continually carried. Terrible dreams 
shake him nightly with fear. It is only he that sees the 
ghost of Banquo rise, the very painting of his imaginative 
dread. His courage is proof against any mortal foe, his 
nerves firm against any natural horror, but not against the 
immortal, the supernatural. Then his cheek is blanched 
by terror. As time goes on, when he is no longer young 
in murder, the initiate fear declines ; but though the fear 
has gone, the superstition remains. He believes the 
witches. He is still the slave of their will to ruin him. 
The apparitions they make him see cause him now no 
dread, but he listens to them as if they were true pro- 
phets. His superstition has bred credulity; and out of 
his false security partly arises the half-insane recklessness 
with which he presses on to meet his fate. 

These keys unlock the man. On such a temperament, 
naturally brave, supernaturally fearful; weak in resolve, 
strong in imagination ; a rude soldier with a poet's heart; 
honourable, but not having any moral foundation for 
his honour, without the conscience which is honour's 
guard; his honour only the custom of his class — on 
such a temperament falls the heavy temptation of ambi- 
tion. He has nursed the thought of being king ; he has 
talked it over, it is plain, with his wife. She has taken 
the same infection. The witches suggest outwardly his 
inward ambition. The dreadful means to reach it dawns 
upon him, but he has not yet formed it into Duncan's 
murder. Duncan's proclamation of his son as his heir 
swells his thought into a kind of rage till he is on the 
edge of murder. Then unlooked-for opportunity comes 
to him. Duncan will sleep at his castle. Murder springs 



204 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

now into his mind. The means, the time, are given him. 
His wife hears that news. And in her also murder on the 
opportunity leaps into swift life. Duncan, in the minds 
of both, is dead already. The long-cherished forces of 
various thoughts, leading to one thought, explode into 
form. 

Macb. My dearest love, 

Duncan comes here to-night. 

Lady M. And when goes hence ? 

Macb. To-morrow as he purposes. 

Lady M. ! never 

Shall sun that morrow see ! 
Your face, my thane, is as a book where men 
May read strange matters. To beguile the time, 
Look like the time ; bear welcome in your eye, 
Your hand, your tongue : look like the innocent flower, 
But be the serpent under 't. He that 's coming 
Must be provided for : and you shall put 
This night's great business into my dispatch ; 
Which shall to all our nights and days to come 
Give solely sovereign sway and masterdom. 

Macb. We will speak further. 

Lady M. Only look up clear ; 

To alter favour ever is to fear : 
Leave all the rest to me. 

And he does leave it to her. He is but the hand which 
does the murder. She is the impelling soul of it, the 
incarnate slaughter. She lifts his weakness into strength, 
his fears into courage ; opposes her reason to his fears, her 
common-sense to his imaginings. She spends as much 
force and intelligence to have her own wild will, as would 
have enabled her to do good to the whole of Scotland. 
It is impossible not to admire her strength when we set 
aside the evil to which she puts it. 

The penalty of an evil passion is that it harnesses to 
its car, and degrades, the original goodness of a character. 
Had Lady Macbeth been thrown by circumstances into a 
right way, or had her passion been a noble one, she had 
very swiftly learnt goodness. For, unlike her husband, 



MACBETH 205 

she could develop a conscience. He had no remorse ; she 
had. It rose in her when the tempest of her desire was 
over, its impulse dead. Nor was she heartless, save in 
the rage of her impulse. 

Lady Macbeth, as Shakespeare conceived her, was 
not by nature a bad woman, but a woman who became 
bad by long cherishing of ambition for the crown. This 
desire, not an impossible one for Macbeth had some preten- 
sions to the crown, was made much stronger by that which 
was good in her — by her love for her husband. This whiff 
of goodness mixes with the murder. It is plain that these 
two, even in crime, loved cne another well, and had been 
closely knit together. Macbeth knew her strength and 
loved her, before the murder, more than she loved him. She 
knew his weakness in action, weakness through over- think- 
ing, over-imagination ; but she loved the man, and perhaps 
all the more that his weakness enabled her to feel her own 
power when she kindled him to act, and defended him in 
trouble. When she inspirits him to the murder, we are 
repelled, even when we are surprised into a strange 
admiration; but when she guards him, in his weakness 
on the apparition of Banquo, she awakens our emotional 
interest and our pity. But, at that time, the overwhelm- 
ing impulse which momentarily drove her to murder has 
departed from her. She has passed into the reaction from 
it, and the natural good in her character, undeveloped as 
it had been, has begun to emerge. When we nest see her, 
in the sleep-walking scene, she is the thrall of avenging 
conscience and of womanly horror for her deed. And 
finally, in another rush of unregulated impulse, she lays 
violent hands on herself, for the conscience Macbeth has 
not she has now developed. 

She is then, from the time she receives Macbeth's 
letter and hears that Duncan is coming that night to 
the castle, the victim of one of those unbridled impulses 



206 LECTUEES ON SHAKESPEARE 

whose outburst, like that of a volcano, is the result of 
inward thoughts and passions directed to one end, in- 
creasing during years of silence, and at last reaching their 
highest point of expansion. A single touch, a sudden 
chance, and they explode into irresistible and transient 
energy. In some women, in whom the love of power is 
supreme, and whose intellect is cold if their passions 
are hot, such an impulse of passion — of love or jealousy, 
of ambition, hatred or fear — is, for the time, their only law. 
For them, in this sudden outbreaking into form of long- 
nurtured thoughts — each making its own passion, each 
unrepressed but its outward shaping repressed — everything 
else but the impulse to fulfil their desire disappears. Earth 
and heaven flee away, and there is no place for them. 
Honour, duty, the claims of the affections, motherhood, 
friendship, morality, the conventions of society, all the 
ties of the past, are counted as dust in the balance in 
comparison with the attainment of their will. The emo- 
tion is so intense that, while it lasts, it lifts them above 
nature, above the natural feeling and restraints of their 
sex. They are capable of saying things which violate even 
the first instincts of nature, such as this — 

I have given suck, and know 
How tender 'tis to love the babe that inilks me : 
I would, while it was smiling in my face, 
Have pluck'd my nipple from his boneless gums, 
And dash'd the brains out, had I so sworn as you 
Have done to this. 

One thing, the impulse, whatever it be, is the despot of the 
whole character; and the unity of the force employed, 
utterly unmodified by any other element, makes its energy 
overwhelming. Macbeth and his objections were as soft 
clay in a furious potter's hand before the whirling wheel 
of his wife's illimitable impulse. 

The known characteristic of such an impulse is that it 



MACBETH 207 

arises suddenly into action, and is quickly exhausted. It 
came on Lady Macbeth in a moment on the reception of 
Macbeth's letter. That voiced the possibility of the 
hopes being realised over which she had brooded for so 
long, and the wild image of the reality seized on her 
brain. But, at first, no clear opportunity is given. Then 
comes the news that Duncan is coming to spend the night 
at her castle, and the full fury of her impulse falls upon 
her. She sees, hears, feels nothing but the death of the 
king. We hear the all-consuming tyranny of her desire 
in the low cry she utters when the messenger tells her, 
'The king comes here to-night! Thou'rt mad to say it' 
is the voice her inward passion wrings from her. Then 
follows the whispered intensity of the scene which begins 

with 

The raven himself is hoarse 
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan 
Under my battlements. 

When Macbeth enters, the impulse is doubled by her love 
of him, by her consciousness that in his thought he is at 
one with her. She receives him with the rapture of her 
desire. She sees him already slaying Duncan. The pre- 
sent has perished; she lives in the future; she is in a 
whirlwind of terrible hope. 

Thy letters have transported me beyond 
This ignorant present, and I feel now 
The future in the instant. 

This transporting passion never fails during the mur- 
derous night. All Macbeth's hesitations go down before 
it. She uses all a woman's weapons. She denies her 
motherhood's tenderness, though she knows she is false 
to herself, as she is when outside of the storm on which she 
is borne away. She mocks him with bitter sarcasm. He 
is untrue to himself and a coward. Her very love for him, 
as he resists, momentarily fades away. To support the 



208 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

impulse, when at the instant of the murder it lessens 
through the stress of horror, she drinks of the spirit with 
which she has drenched the grooms — 

That which hath made them drunk hath made me hold ; 
What hath quench'd them hath given me fire. 

Had Duncan not resembled her father as he slept — 
strange, yet natural moment of recurrence to old affec- 
tionateness — she herself had stabbed him. Nothing is 
impossible in the whirl of the impulse. 

Not till the murder is done does the force of the impulse 
begin to diminish. When she sees Macbeth in a tremble of 
imaginative terror, touched by superstitious horror, his 
phantasies (though she supports, uplifts, and encourages 
him) begin to bring on the reaction. Its first note is 

These deeds must not he thought 
After these ways ; so, it will make us mad. 

But this is only the beginning. She is still in the rush of 
her desire. She knits her energies to the needs of the 
hour, opposes her reason to his fancies, bids him be 
practical, wash his hands, get on his nightgown, go to his 
bed. She takes the daggers, sees without a tremor the 
murdered man, makes bloody the faces of the grooms, and 
comes back to say 

A little water clears us of this deed ; . . . 

Be not lost 
So poorly in your thoughts. 

No impulse, borne to so wild a height as hers had 
been, could continue at that height. There was a 
certainty of reaction. Macbeth, on the contrary, had 
not been so borne away. He had resisted his wife's 
pleading; he had done what he had done in fear and 
trembling ; he had yielded to her with many reasonings 
and difficulties. At last he had done the deed in cold 
horror, hearing a dreadful voice — Sleep no more. He too 



MACBETH 209 

would suffer a reaction, but it would take an opposite 
form to that which hers would take. And, true enough, 
next day their roles are entirely changed. Macbeth, 
having exhausted all his objections, all his fears, and 
having irreparably committed his murder, is absolutely 
changed from the trembling, reasoning, white-hearted 
personage of the murder scene. He is cool, determined, 
quick in action, ruthless, fearless, save when, seeing the 
ghost of Banquo, the superstitious fear native to him 
from his childhood grips him for a time. No one sus- 
pects him but Duncan's sons. He sticks at nothing, 
murders the servants to put the deed upon them and to 
hide their evidence, covers blood with blood, describes 
with a ghastly poetry Duncan's body, and acts as swiftly 
as the lightning. Before his purpose cools he does the 
deed he projects, even though it means the needless 
murder of such innocent folk as the wife and children 
of Macduff. 

For mine own good 
All causes shall give way : I am in blood 
Stepp'd in so far, that should I wade no more, 
Returning were as tedious as go o'er. 

The flighty purpose never is o'ertook 
Unless the deed go with it ; from this moment 
The very firstlings of my heart shall be 
The firstlings of my hand. . . . 

No boasting like a fool ; 
This deed I '11 do, before this purpose cool : 
But no more sights ! 

No change can be greater. We look upon another 
man. 

As great a change comes upon Lady Macbeth. The 
storm of impulse is over. She has slept it away, or it has 
died in the silent sleeplessness of that dreadful dawn 
before the grfeat- cry came which brought her down to 
face the terror-stricken crowd, and to faint away. She 
o 



210 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

has wakened to the horror of what she has clone ; and she 
returns to her natural self — as she was, before the tempta- 
tion she had long cherished rose into fierce action, and 
transported her beyond herself. She is a wholly different 
woman, when she comes down in the morning, from the 
woman of the night before. Macduff has called her a 
'gentle lady,' and something of this gentleness emerges. 
When Macbeth, bolder and cooler than thrice-tempered 
steel, describes Duncan, his 'silver skin laced with his 
golden blood,' in the strange play of his poetic imagina- 
tion — describes what he and she have done — she cannot 
bear it ; she faints away. Some have said that the 
swoon was pretended. That is foolish ; there is no 
reason in Shakespeare for such a suggestion. Even if 
nothing of her natural womanhood were now returning, 
as I think it was, the terrible strain on her brain and 
body of the night, and now of the morning's discovery, are 
enough to account for her fainting. But there was more 
in it than that. What appears afterwards in her sleep- 
walking — the woman's natural horror of the bloody deed 
— had already begun to move in her. Then all through 
the scene where the ghost of Banquo rises, her words, 
even when they reproach Macbeth and sting him into 
courage, have so much tenderness breaking through them, 
her defence of him to the lords is so anxious, so wistful, 
that it is impossible not to pity her, to feel kindly for her. 
She says nothing ill, nothing unwomanly, but wisely, with 
clear sense, clear intelligence, and courage, in her guarding 
of Macbeth. Those great qualities she yet retains, and 
they serve well her love, and the piteous comradeship in 
crime of these two isolated souls. When the guests 
depart, and Macbeth alone with her gives vent to the 
fears he has — but only when the supernatural thrills his 
nerves — and swears that he will drown them in the 
slaughter of all whom he suspects, there is a worn 



MACBETH 211 

pathetic cry, half for herself, half for him, in the words 
with which she answers him ; 

You lack the season of all natures, sleep. 

They are all the more pathetic when we find afterwards 
that sleep could not soothe her miserable misery. She is 
changed indeed. 

Moreover, her conscience now begins to awake. She 
dwells on the irreparableness of what they have done. 

How now, my lord ! why do you keep alone, 

Of sorriest fancies your companions making, 

Using those thoughts which should indeed have died 

With them they think od 1 Things without all remedy 

Should be without regard : what 's done is done. 

She repeats this in her sleep — 'What's done cannot be 
undone.' It is only the awakened conscience which dwells 
on the irreparable past. Macbeth does not. He seeks 
only to secure the future. She lives in the ghastliness 
of the past. When she is alone, for with her husband she 
is always brave, we hear how deep the arrow of remorse 

has pierced. 

Nought 's had, all 's spent, 
Where our desire is got without content : 
'Tis safer to be that which we destroy 
Than by destruction dwell in doubtful joy. 

The only wicked thing she says — but she says it to back 
up her husband when he tells of the scorpion- thought that 
Banquo and Fleance still live — is wicked indeed. 
But in them nature's copy 's not eterne. 

'There's comfort,' cries Macbeth, but we cannot argue 
from this one wicked phrase to a total searing of her con- 
science, especially when we find that this very slaughter 
of Banquo forms part of her agony in sleep. 

That dreadful vision of her soul tells us what a pro- 
found change has taken place in her since the murder. 
Her natural womanhood and her conscience are both 



212 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

alive in her sleep-walking, and she voices in it the 
thoughts of the day. Night after night she lives over 
again the murder of Duncan, of Banquo, of Macduff's wife 
and children. These deeds sit heavy on her soul, and 
among them are her own urgings to Macbeth that make 
her feel she has been even guiltier than he. There is a 
piteousness in her words wholly unlike what she was 
before the murder. 

Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood 
in him. . . . The Thane of Fife had a wife : where is she now 1 What ! 
will these hands ne'er be clean ? . . . Here 's the smell of the blood 
still : all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. 
Oh! oh! oh! 

This woman is, like Macbeth, but how differently, all 
changed. Her conscience and her womanhood slay her. 
She dies by her own hand. 

The reason of this astonishing change in the feeling and 
action of Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, both moving in an 
opposite direction to that in which they moved before the 
murder, may be found in a general difference between 
man and woman ; a sex-difference which, always existing in 
ordinary life, does not plainly appear until they are placed 
together in extraordinary circumstances, such as a sudden 
temptation or a strong impulse of passion. We can 
discuss this difference in the case of Macbeth and Lady 
Macbeth, for the one was wholly a man and the other 
wholly a woman. I have already said that sex in Shake- 
speare is always normal. 

The general difference is this. In a man emotion 
rarely exists without thought being exercised upon it. 
Any passionate desire, like Macbeth's temptation to slay 
Duncan in order to gain the throne, is accompanied by 
an intellectual discussion of its reasons, its difficulties, 
and its consequences. They are entered into before the 
temptation is yielded to, or the impulse followed. Every 



MACBETH 213 

emotion is bound up with its thoughts, and every thought 
with its emotions, like two clasped hands. 

But in a woman it is not so, whenever passion or in- 
tellect is dominant in her. If her intellect be dominant, it 
acts, and governs her actions alone, without any emotion 
accompanying it. If her passion dominate, it also acts 
alone without any thought mixed up with it. No reason- 
ing, no discussion of objections or results, such as Macbeth 
indulged in, accompanies the execution of her desire. 

Lady Macbeth, in the whirl of her impulse, saw no 
objections to the murder of Duncan. No sense of honour, 
no scruples of conscience, no womanly feelings, inter- 
vened to stay her will. Her intellect and what sense of 
right or wrong she may have had do not exist for the 
time. She acts as unself-restrained as a law of nature. 
Macbeth, on the contrary, sees all the objections, reasons 
out the whole question, considers that he risks his soul 
and stains his honour black, looks the consequences in 
the face and fears them, understands his peril and his 
crime beforehand, and deliberately, with his reason see- 
ing all these matters clearly, fulfils his passionate desire, 
executes his murder. Of all this there is not a trace in 
Lady Macbeth on the night of the slaughter. 

It is easy now to explain the change. When the furious 
wind of her passion had died away, all the thoughts Lady 
Macbeth's passion had concealed from her, now rushed 
upon her, weakened by the storm. The fears, the doubts 
her husband had, beset her now when her deed is 
irreparable ; the violation of her roof-tree, the gentleness 
and trust of Duncan, the horror of blood, the dreadful 
consequences, the battering of awakened conscience 
and she breaks down into mortal ruin. Moreover, 
the momentary loss of her womanhood, of all tender- 
ness, the unsexing of herself in the intensity of her 
impulse, are avenged by that return of her womanhood 



214 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

which is disclosed to us when sleep has loosened her 
self-control. 

But Macbeth has faced beforehand all the consequences, 
has seen his crime in all its bearings. He has met and 
put aside, before he has committed the murder, all that 
his reason, and the sense of honour which serves him 
for conscience, can urge against his crime. He has seen 
the results and accepted them. When they come, they 
are already discounted. After their fever they sleep well, 
as well as Duncan. Therefore he is cool, indifTerent to 
his guilt, ready at all points to meet what he has already 
presaged; quite free from all self-reproach, as reckless 
now as he was before anxious. Having once steeped his 
hands in blood, he cares for no after-slaughters — ruthless, 
physically undaunted, no whiteness now in his heart. 
And his reason turns now, not to object to crime, but 
to organise fresh crime in order to clear and secure his 
position. Even his superstitious fears, when the vision of 
Banquo has ceased, are dispersed. He has supped full of 
horrors, and they trouble him no more. He faces the 
witches and their apparitions, even that of Banquo, as if 
he were one of themselves. This is the difference between 
the man and the woman. 

I have sketched the conduct of the play up to the 
coronation. The death of Banquo is the doubling of 
crime, and from it dates the ruin of Macbeth. Inwardly, 
it began with the murder of Duncan, but the murder of 
Banquo begins it outwardly. The apparition of Banquo 
shakes his imagination into terror, and in order to bluff 
his fear, he exalts his will to 'wade' deeper into blood. 
He is, he cries, in a wild excitement for murder, ' yet but 
young in deed.' He will go to see the Weird Sisters and 
know the worst. And now the witches reappear, and 
Hecate bids them by further illusion draw Macbeth on 
to his confusion. These scenes are by some taken away 



MACBETH 215 

from Shakespeare. I should like to know who else could 
have written them. The vaporous drop profound which 
hangs on the corner of the moon, and which Hecate 
distils to raise the sprites which confuse Macbeth, is not 
from any other imagination than Shakespeare's. If the 
cauldron and its ingredients are borrowed from the witch- 
books, the form and execution of the whole are of so weird 
and potent a grotesque, that we feel in the actual presence 
of high ministers of evil, at the very 'pit of Acheron.' 
Nor are the things done and shown, or the cauldron and 
its ingredients real. They are illusion, and they vanish 
into air. They are to act on the soul of Macbeth, to ruin 
him by false security. He knows at the end that they 
were juggling fiends 

That palter with ue in a double sense ; 
That keep the word of promise to the ear, 
And break it to our hope. 

Dramatically, their promises contain the rest of Macbeth's 
action and his death. 

Meantime, we have heard of Macduff's flight to England, 
and of Macbeth's rage at this news. And the two next 
scenes belong closely to this news. We find Lady Macduff 
in her castle at Fife complaining of her husband's deser- 
tion. He loves us not : 

He wants the natural touch ; for the poor wren, 
The most diminutive of birds, will fight — 
Her young ones in her nest — against the owl. 
All is the fear and nothing is the love ; 

She does not understand the policy which, wise for the 
kingdom, is not wise for her. And indeed she is right. 
Macduff had probably killed her love. ' Sirrah, your 
father's dead,' she tells her son. Whatever petulant 
impatience of the moment may be in her cry, I do not 
think she would have ever forgiven her husband. Ross 
defends him, but Ross and all those who defend him 



216 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

do not know a woman; nor do they see that Macduff, 
who is honest, politic, brave, is yet_of a . weak intellect. 
He made, with excellent intentions, a grave mistake 
in abandoning his wife to the power of a man whose 
wicked ruthlessness he knew. And the mistake has two 
results. One is that Malcolm suspects him of treachery. 
He cannot understand the ' rawness with which he left 
his wife and child. He has been untrue to them; is he 
untrue to me ? ' The other result is the slaughter of his 
home. It is absurd to say that Macduff is punished, as 
some say. There is no moral guilt in his action. It is an 
error, but errors have the nature of vices, and Shake- 
speare remembers that curious truth from play to play. 
Indeed this short sketch of Macduff's conduct, its result 
on his wife, and on the action of the play, is an admirable 
example of Shakespeare's careful work on his less import- 
ant characters. 

The scene before the king's palace in England is taken 
up with these two results. We feel the weakness of 
Macduff when he excuses, for the sake of policy, all the 
villainies with which Malcolm loads his own character. 
It is only when Malcolm paints himself as the foe oi all 
unity and peace, that honesty in Macduff breaks loose 
from policy. 

Fit to govern ! 
No, not to live. 

They are reconciled, and an episode of a doctor and a 
history of King Edward curing the king's evil is dragged 
in. The whole scene, I have said already, grossly delays 
the action, and is quite unnecessary. It ought to have 
been omitted. It is only when Ross comes, in, that the 
movement is again afoot. The tenderness and pathetic 
beauty of the passages when the bold warrior is smitten 
down with the news of his slaughtered home are an 
island of grace in the midst of this ocean of blood. 



MACBETH 217 

The overwhelming stress of our feelings is relieved by its 
nobleness. 

Then follows the sleep-walking scene; and the fall of 
Lady Macbeth is revealed to us. She reaches her ruin 
through the terrible depression of the reaction from the 
fierce impulse which slaughtered Duncan. We are first 
shown its work on the night when Banquo is murdered. 
She keeps up her strength to defend her husband, but 
when she is alone with him, she is utterly exhausted. 
And now, when she walks in her sleep, her soul is laid 
bare. The hopeless misery of her quick- coming fancies, 
all of them crimsoned and horrible with blood, is eating 
away her life. The great cry of her women, at the moment 
when Macbeth realises that he is face to face with his foes, 
tells us that she is gone. Poor soul ! weak through want 
of will to curb the impulse of passion, she recurs, when the 
passion which made her strong to do evil and for the 
time supreme in tragedy has passed away, to her original 
weakness and dies by her own hand. 

And now we are left alone with Macbeth, and he is 
alone with himself. He is as exalted as his wife is de- 
pressed. The murder has opposite results on each of 
them, and I have tried to explain the reason of this. 

He is quite reckless — almost in the same temper in 
which his wife was just before the murder of Duncan. This 
recklessness has grown from the days when he sacrificed 
Banquo because he feared his royalty of nature and his 
wisdom, because it was bitter as death to him that 
Banquo's issue, while he was childless, should be kings. 
It has grown still more since the dreadful night when 
he saw Banquo rise and glare into his eyes. When that 
vision passed him by, its only result was to exalt his 
transient terror into so intense a rage that while the 
vision of Banquo's heirs sears his eyeballs, he looks 
now untremblingly at Banquo himself, whose blood- 



218 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

boltered visage smiles upon him. As the danger from 
without increases, his distempered excitement increases, 
till it issues in that which seems to some a valiant 
fury, to others madness. The valiancy of his recklessness 
is supported by his faith in the promises of the witches ; 
he is safe till Birnam wood shall come to Dunsinane, 
till he meet an enemy not born of woman. He is always 
brave, but this credulity makes him speak like a swash- 
buckler at the very hour, when his mind tells him his 
cause is lost. 

Another element in him is physical. Macbeth's nerves, 
as we have seen, are always thrilling. Now, of course, 
when doom is gathering thick around him, they are worse 
than before. They must be like harp-strings overstrung. 
The effort to repress their cry intensifies the storm. Hence 
his shouting, his wild cries for war, the outbreaks of un- 
controlled and furious speech to the servants — 

The devil damn thee black, thou cream-faced loon ! 

Outward furies like this tell of the raging of the nerve- 
storm within. It bursts into anger with the slightest 
things; with a servant's pale face, with a stammering 
tongue. This is to be on the knife-edge of madness. 

The only solace, the only countercheck to this, is in 
violent acts of war, in preparation for combat. 

I '11 fight till from my bones my flesh be hack'd. 
Give me my armour. 

In this condition, so battered, so self : stormed, sojisolated 
in his own fears and in his tempestuous soul, it is no 
wonder that his love for his wife, though not lost, is dulled, 
is part of the walking shadow of life. He discusses her 
illness coolly, almost with a scornful philosophy. She is 
troubled, says the Doctor, with thick-coming fancies that 
keep her from her rest. 



MACBETH 219 

Macb. Cure her of that : 

Canst thou not minister to a mind diseas'd, 
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, 
Raze out the written troubles of the brain, 
And with some sweet oblivious antidote 
Cleanse the stuff'd bosom of that perilous stuff 
Which weighs upon the heart % 

Doct. Therein the patient 

Must minister to himself. 

Macb. Throw physic to the dogs : I '11 none of it. 



When he hears of her death, he only says, ' She should 

have died hereafter ' ; and passes on to think of himself. 

The freezing shadow of the doom that has enwrapt him 

has almost frozen his love. 

Amid all this conflict of diverse elements, or rather, 

behind them all, is unspeakable weariness of life — all lost, 

all done — and with that, an infinite pity for himself, and 

infinite pity for poor humanity. He transfers, with that 

sympathy which belongs to a poetic nature, his own 

failure to all humanity. Life, and all its passions, hopes, 

and endeavour, are nothing but illusion. When he is 

alone ; when he gets down, apart from the race of action, 

into his deepest self; this raises its head within him. 

And he expresses it with that strange poetry which, even 

in physical, mental, and moral ruin, still survives. 

Seyton ! — T am sick at heart 
When I behold — Seyton, I say ! — This push 
Will chair me ever, or disseat me now. 
I have lived long enough : my way of life 
Is fallen into the sear, the yellow leaf ; 
And that which should accompany old age, 
As honour, love, obedience, troops of friends, 
I must not look to have. 

Still more poetical, of the finest strain — more human, 
mingling his own life with all the life of humanity — when 
the cry of women tells him the queen is dead — 

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, 
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, 
To the last syllable of recorded time ; 



220 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools 
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle ! 
Life 's but a walking shadow, a poor player 
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, 
And then is heard no more ; it is a tale 
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, 
Signifying nothing. 

There is Macbeth, deep down. The next moment he is 
all fire and action. And both the valiant fury of war and 
the unutterable weariness of life meet in the last thing he 
says before the last battle. 

I 'gin to be a-weary of the sun, 
And wish the estate o' the world were now undone. 
Ring the alarum bell ! Blow wind ! come, wrack ! 
At least we '11 die with harness on our back. 



VIII 

COKIOLANUS 

This play was written, probably in 1609, when Shake- 
speare's genius had fully matured, after he had proved 
the splendour of his work in the great tragedies — Lear, 
Othello, Hamlet, and Macbeth — and just before he wrote, 
in his latest period, Cymbeline, Winters Tale, and The 
Tempest It has been greatly praised, and even com- 
pared, for dramatic interest, with Othello. For my part, 
I cannot feel that. Shakespeare's power in it, magnifi- 
cent in many places, is not so equally distributed as in the 
greater plays, and the splendid passages make the change 
of amalgamating power even more remarkable. Then, 
it is, in a lesser degree than Richard II. and III., a 
one-man play. The figure of Coriolanus, and his fate — 
of Coriolanus in a twofold relation; to his mother and 
to the people — dominates almost too overwhelmingly the 
interest of the rest of the drama. Cominius, Aufidius, 
Menenius, the tribunes, even the women, except Volumnia, 
are a little too much in the background. If they had 
been more fully interwoven with the action, the play 
would have been closer to human life. It is true, we have 
a great variety in the crowds and disturbance of Rome, 
in the scenes at Corioli. The stage is full of the move- 
ment and clash of parties. A vivid impression of a crisis 
between the nobles and the people in a great city is given 
to us. But when the play is done, and even while we 
read, we feel as if all the noise, fury, folly, and wisdom 
of the strife were but a scenery for the overmastering 



222 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

presentation, first of Coriolanus, and then of Coriolanus 
and his mother. I think, but with great diffidence, that 
Shakespeare's power of combination, of giving unity to 
his play in the midst of a vivid variety, had now less- 
ened; or that he did not take as much pains in this 
matter as of old. He was not quite the absolute dramatic 
master he had been. And of the three plays that follow 
this, midst of all their exquisite beauty, I would say the 
same. The poetry itself is as lovely as ever, even more 
lovely than ever before, in these swan-songs of his, but the 
co-ordinating power is either less or less carefully exercised. 

The story of this play, though it is found in Painter's 
Palace of Pleasure, a book Shakespeare read, was taken 
by him, with singular cleverness, from the life of Corio- 
lanus in North's Plutarch, and it is worth while to com- 
pare the translation with the play, especially in such im- 
portant passages as the speech of Coriolanus to Aufidius, 
and the scene between him and his mother in the fifth 
act, where Shakespeare has often followed North's render- 
ing almost word for word. The title-page acknowledges 
Shakespeare's indebtedness to that book of Plutarch's, 
which indeed, for nearly two thousand years, has been an 
imaginative inspiration in the souls of all eager young 
men, and a wise, impelling, and thought-stirring power in 
the lives of statesmen, philosophers, artists, lawmakers, 
and of heroic souls in every class of men. It is curious 
to think that, as the mighty spirit of Shakespeare read 
his Plutarch, he knew that at certain great moments of 
his play he could say nothing better than Plutarch had 
said. It is equally curious that this great creator deli- 
berately copied down the words of Caius Marcius to 
Aufidius, of Volumnia to Coriolanus. This honours alike 
Shakespeare and Plutarch. 

Three matters of interest are prominent in this work of 
art : (1) Shakespeare's treatment of the political question 



CORIOLANUS 223 

in Rome; (2) the character and fate of Coriolanus; (3) 
Coriolanus and his mother. 

Hazlitt says that all has been said in this drama that 
can be said for both aristocrat and democrat. It is, he 
adds, a storehouse of political commonplaces. There are, 
of course, political commonplaces in the play. Shake- 
speare was bound to include those opinions and phrases 
which the man in the street delivers in the midst of every 
political crisis between the people and the richer classes. 1 
But there are a number of wise things also said, such as 
fall from far-seeing persons, who at a crisis of this kind 
look backward and look forward. And above all, as I 
venture to think, we are made to feel, moving like a spirit 
through the play, the sympathy of Shakespeare with the 
struggle of the people. It is almost traditionary among 
the critics to claim Shakespeare as a tolerant mocker of 
the people, and as a supporter, on the whole, of those, 
whether of wealth or rank, who stood above them. They 
make him a kind of Menenius ; as if that giant intellect 
were wholly led away by prejudice, as if he were entirely 
faithless to his own class and their strife for justice. No 
one seems to think how impossible, how almost miracu- 
lous, considering his many-sided genius, such a position 
would be for Shakespeare. 

It would be wiser to say to ourselves : ' Shakespeare was 
certain, with that brain of his, to see all sides of the ques- 
tion, and to represent them.' And that is exactly what 
he does. He had his 'good-humoured laugh' at mobs, 
their blindness, changeableness, violence, and 'tall talk.' 
We see the mob of Rome, here and in Julius Ccesar, 



1 In another play where, as here, the principal character is dominant 
— in Richwrd III. — Shakespeare has, for the first time, represented the 
opinions of the man in the street ; not those of demagogues, but of three 
grave London citizens who, without anything to do with the main actions, 
discuss the news of the day and the affairs of the state with admirable 
prudence, and each in character (Act n. Sc. iii.). 



224 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

following the last orator, blessing in one act those whom 
they curse in another ; heaping honour on their tribunes 
in one scene, and haling them to the Tarpeian rock in 
another. We read his picture of the mere demagogue, 
so like our own, and we know how Shakespeare despised 
the type. He paints it in the first citizen, who shouts 
for the death of Coriolanus : ' Let us kill him, and we 11 
have corn at our own price. Is 't a verdict ? ' ' Let us 
revenge our wrongs with our pikes, ere we become rakes : 
for the gods know I speak this in hunger for bread, not 
in thirst for revenge.' Menenius calls this man, in scorn, 
' the great toe of the assembly ' — 

For that, being one o' the lowest, basest, poorest, 
Of this most wise rebellion, thou go'st foremost, 

to win vantage for himself, rather than good for his party. 
Coriolanus is the enemy to him. He sees no good in him 
at all; what services he has done to his country were 
done to please his mother and foster his pride, not for the 
people of Rome. ' He 's a very dog to the commonalty.' 

But to paint what is foolish and extreme in the people 
did not prevent Shakespeare from painting what was 
just in their demands, wise and modest in their conduct ; 
as, when he painted the pride, scorn, and oppressiveness 
of Coriolanus, he did not involve the whole of the 
patricianate of Rome in the same vices. 

In this play Shakespeare, but not so openly as to offend 
his patrons, was in sympathy with the people. He records 
with severe plainness the injustice and misery which 
they had suffered; and to make this more remarkable 
he places their cries in the mouth of the shouting dema- 
gogue he has so broadly sketched. He knew that the 
wrongs were real even though their mouthpiece was 
violent. So far Shakespeare sj^mpathised even with him. 
These wrongs are fully detailed. Menenius answers, just 
as these oppressors are customed to say, that the patri- 



CORIOLANUS 225 

cians ' care for the people like fathers.' ' Care for us ! ' 
answers this citizen — 

True, indeed ! They ne'er cared for us yet : suffer us to famish, and 
their store-houses crammed with grain ; make edicts for usury, to sup- 
port usurers ; repeal daily any wholesome act established against the 
rich, and provide more piercing statutes daily to chain up and restrain 
the poor. If the wars eat us not up, they will ; and there 's all the love 
they bear us. 

Then, too, his drawing of Coriolanus suggests his 
sympathy with the popular movement. No one can help 
seeing that Shakespeare did not love Coriolanus, nor 
approve his conduct. The last words spoken over him 
are not like those spoken over Brutus; and both are 
spoken by enemies. They are chill and half-hearted. 
His speeches rarely reach nobility of feeling or thought ; 
except when they are concerned with war, or with his 
mother. They are loaded with big words, so turgid that 
when we know how Shakespeare could make his great 
characters speak, we are convinced that he had no admira- 
tion, but all but contempt, for Coriolanus. Of course, he 
pitied his fate, and this pity recurs again and again in the 
play, but nothing can be more rigid than his steady draw- 
ing of the inevitable punishment to which such a character 
has doomed himself. It is as if Shakespeare were himself 
Nemesis. In fact, Coriolanus is made to bear the same 
relation to the body of the patricians that the dema- 
gogue of the first act bears to the mass of the people. He 
is the blustering assertor of the rights and claims of the 
aristocracy, without foresight, intelligence, temperance, 
humanity or knowledge, the victim of his violent temper 
and fatal pride ; but withal the greatest of soldiers. 

Again, consider Shakespeare's representation of other 
citizens and the tribunes. He has drawn the reeling mob 
and the mouthing demagogue. At the same time he 
draws the temperate and tolerant citizens in the person of 



226 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

the second citizen. ' Consider,' he says, ' what services 
Coriolanus has done for his country.' ' Speak not 
maliciously,' he cries to the demagogue. And he excuses 
Coriolanus, even for his pride. ' What he cannot help in 
his nature, you account a vice in him. You must in no 
way say he is covetous.' All that is like a prudent and 
kindly hearted Roman ; the very opposite of the loud 
violence of the mob-leader. Moreover, the people are 
made by Shakespeare to behave exceedingly well at the 
election of Coriolanus. They repress their rancour in 
dealing with their great enemy because he has fought 
so well for Rome. ' If he tell us of his noble deeds, we 
must also tell him of our noble acceptance of them. In- 
gratitude is monstrous.' ' I say, if he would incline to 
the people, there never was a worthier man.' ' He has 
done nobly, and cannot go without any honest man's 
voice.' It is impossible to believe that Shakespeare could 
really despise the people when he makes them speak in 
this fashion. 

And then the tribunes ! They are not mere dema- 
gogues. They are fighting the battle of their class with 
prudence, intelligence, and skill, against the stupidity 
and oppression of the upper class. Not with the unreason 
of the mob-orator, but with resolute foresight, they deter- 
mine to overthrow Coriolanus as the common enemy of 
the people. Once he is exiled they can deal with the rest 
of the patricians in a quiet way, and with a good hope of 
success. And they give themselves to that aim with cool 
precision of attack. They use no wild words. They 
speak throughout with quietude and resolution, as men 
who care for the cause of their fellow-citizens more than 
for themselves. 

Politically considered, the play is the artistic record of 
the victory of a people, unrighteously oppressed, over 
their oppressor, who is the exaggerated incarnation of the 



CORIOLANUS 227 

temper of his class. I will glance through the play from 
this point of view. 

While the citizens are debating their wrongs Menenius 
comes upon them. He is the old and jovial aristocrat, 
who loves a cup of hot wine, and adores a hero like 
Coriolanus ; hasty in temper but keeping no malice, and 
in politics eager for moderate counsels; bluff of speech 
because he is old, and because of his class-contempt for 
the people, which contempt he generally modifies into 
good-humoured attacks on their follies. He is endured, 
but seen through, by the tribunes of the people — ' Come, 
sir, come, we know you well enough.' A thorough patri- 
cian, who yet desires to be hail-fellow-well-met with the 
people; who has among them the fame of caring for 
them, but who does not really care for their wrongs in 
comparison with the smallest right the patricians claim ; 
the prosperous conservative, quite ready to help the 
people provided the people are kept down. The possi- 
bility of any democratic change never enters his mind. 
The world of Rome will always go on as it is now. You 
may as well, he says to the citizens, 

Strike at the heaven with your staves as lift them 
Against the Eoman state, whose course will on 
The way it takes, cracking ten thousand curbs 
Of more strong link asunder than can ever 
Appear in your impediment. 
The patricians, the senate, are the centre of Rome ; if the 
centre be weakened the people will perish — and he tells 
his story of the belly and the rebellious members of the 
body. ' But we are perishing now,' they say, ' and the 
nobility are the cause.' ' Wait, keep quiet, don't disturb 
the state, all will be soon quite comfortable. The one 
thing needful is no change. All your good comes from 
the patricians ' — 

No public benefit which you receive 

But it proceeds or comes from them to you, 

And no way from yourselves. 



228 LECTUEES ON SHAKESPEARE 

When change has been wrought, and he hears that tribunes 
have been granted, he does not understand it. { This is 
strange,' he says- Then, when further change is wrought, 
and Coriolanus is banished, Menenius accepts the tribunes 
and the change ; and then, when Rome turns against the 
tribunes, throws himself back into his old position. His 
conservatism is permanent opportunism. However, at 
this early point of the play (in his belief in the everlasting 
continuance of the state as it is), the blindness of this 
Roman Polonius is clear, though he seem so wise. Corio- 
lanus sees twice as far, just because his hatred of the 
people opens his eyes. He knows, when the tribunes are 
given to the people, that the predominance of his class 
is doomed. Hatred, often blind, is sometimes keen-eyed. 
There are many instances of the blindness of Menenius, 
of the clear sight of Coriolanus. Here is one. Menenius 
is the slave of custom ; Coriolanus is not. One of the 
touches of the play nearest to his character is where his 
pride, and in this case his intelligence, overcomes his con- 
servatism, and he throws precedent overboard — 

Custom calls me to 't ; 
What custom wills, in all things should we do % 
The dust on antique time would lie unswept, 
And mountainous error be too highly heap'd, 
For truth to o'erpeer. 

That is not the conservative position. Menenius cannot 
agree with him ; Coriolanus must follow all the precedents 
of the past. Again and again he implores him for tem- 
perate conduct ; and the battle in his mind between love 
and admiration of Coriolanus and disapproval of his un- 
controlled choler is excellently drawn by Shakespeare. 
Yet, while he disapproves, and is even weary of the furious 
temper of his friend, he hates the people the more because 
they attack his friend. From the moment the battle is set 
in array till the banishment of Coriolanus no one is harder 



CORIOLANUS 229 

on the people than Menenius. No Philippe Egalite is to 
be trusted. The traditions of their class are stronger than 
their popular good-nature. 

The battle has now begun. The one desire of Corio- 
lanus is to overthrow the concession of tribunes to the 
people : he sees that it 

tv ill in time 
Win upon power, and throw forth greater themes 
For insurrection's arguing. 

The one desire of the tribunes is to overthrow Corio- 
lanus, the unyielding spirit of that aristocratic temper 
which the people have begun to conquer. If he be not 
crushed, all they have won is lost. This civil war is 
aggravated by the proud scorn of Coriolanus for the 
intelligence, even for the lives of the people. They are 
of no account in the world save as servants. Whether 
they live or die, suffer or rejoice, is no matter. If they 
complain, let me slaughter them ; 

Would the nobility lay aside their ruth, 
And let me use my sword, I J d make a quarry 
With thousands of these quarter'd slaves, as high 
As I could pick my lance. 

Hang 'em ! Bid them wash their faces, and keep their 

teeth clean. Then he mocks at their sufferings — 

They said they were an-hungry ; sigh'd forth proverbs : 
That hunger broke stone walls ; that dogs must eat ; 
That meat was made for mouths ; that the gods sent not 
Corn for the rich men only. With these shreds 
They vented their complainings ; . . . 

Go ; get you home, you fragments ! 

' If they want food,' said Foulon, in the French Revolu- 
tion, ' let them eat grass.' 

The Volscian War then complicates the situation. 
Coriolanus hails it with joy. It will enable the nobles to 
expend the ' musty superfluity ' of the people ; and the 
huge success of Coriolanus in it makes the patricians 



230 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

hope that they will now get the upper hand, and by in- 
stalling Coriolanus as consul, either balance the power of 
the tribunes, or finally win their cause. 

It seems to promise well. Coriolanus comes home, and 
is at the top of Rome — people, children, women throng to 
welcome him. But this only serves to make more pro- 
minent that division of classes which is the curse of 
states. Menenius, who was kindly to the people once, is 
now bitter against them. His scorn of the tribunes is 
almost as great as that of Coriolanus — ' God-den to your 
worships; more of your conversation would infect my 
brain, being the herdsmen of the beastly plebeians.' If he 
thought thus, the rest of the patricians, less tolerant than 
he, would think the same more strongly. Nor is the real 
division of the people from the patrician class, in spite of 
the apparent unity of Rome under the excitement of 
military glory, less clear. The tribunes are not carried 
away by the triumph of Coriolanus. They see in it a fresh 
danger to that liberty of the people for which they are 
contending: they lay a plot for his destruction as the 
enemy of the people, and it is just that they should do it. 
Coriolanus deserved death. 

The talk of Sicinius and Brutus, admirably conceived 
by Shakespeare, proves them masters of the situation. 
It is marked by that steadfast pitilessness towards the 
oppressing class which has characterised, in all revolu- 
tions of the people, the leaders of the people ; and at the 
back of which is the long hatred of years, sometimes of 
centuries, as it was in the French Revolution. The enemy 
must be annihilated. And the way to destroy Coriolanus 
is clear — to work on his choleric pride till he insults the 
people. He is elected consul, but the tribunes call him 
before the tribunal of the people to answer for his ill- 
deeds against them. He faces them with a suppressed 
fury of wrath, which, lashed by the tribunes' accusa- 



CORIOLANUS 231 

tions, breaks forth into a torrent of mad and scornful 
anger. They sting him to the quick, playing on his 
wrathfumess as on an instrument. In the whole of 
these wonderful scenes in the second and third acts, the 
tribunes are the only cool-headed, dignified folk. Every 
one else is infected with the rage of Coriolanus. When, at 
last, Sicinius cries, 'He hath spoken like a traitor, and 
shall answer for it as traitors do,' Coriolanus bursts out 
into a full fury — 

Cor. Thou wretch ! despite o'erwhelm thee ! 

What should the people do with these bald tribunes 1 

On whom depending, their obedience fails 

To the greater bench. In a rebellion, 

When what 's not meet, but what must be, was law, 

Then were they chosen : in a better hour, 

Let what is meet be said it must be meet, 

And throw their power i' the dust. 
Bru. Manifest treason ! 
Sic. This a consul ? no. 

Bru. The sediles, ho ! Let him be apprehended. 

And instantly, Rome is up. The tAvo parties fight in a 
riot. The tribunes are masters, and condemn Coriolanus 
to death. Menenius intervenes, and Coriolanus stands his 
trial, but his rage, though he tries for temperance, breaks 
out more wildly than ever. His courage, his pride, his 
selfishness, his insolence, his furious temper, are worked 
up to their extremes; and he never ceases to indulge 
them till he has settled his own ruin. The oppressor 
of the people is self-oppressed. Violence and weakness, 
the sister of violence, are his tyrants. Pride is their 
root, but it is not the pride of a great or a strong man, in 
whom pride is the master of the passions. The pride of 
Coriolanus is but the servant or the slavish comrade of 
his choler. A single word like ' traitor ' drives him 
beyond all bounds, and the reticence of a stately pride 
is lost. 



232 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

The fires i' the lowest hell fold-in the people ! 
Call me their traitor ! Thou injurious tribune ! 
Within thine eyes sat twenty thousand deaths, 
In thy hands clutch'd as many millions, in 
Thy lying tongue both numbers, I would say 
' Thou liest ' unto thee with a voice as free 
As I do pray the gods. 

This settles his fate ; but as a galling favour, he is let off 
death, and banished on pain of death. His last speech, 
as he turns on them, has that nobility of tone which adds 
itself to a vice when the doom of the vice is pronounced. 
The majesty of the irreparable belongs to it. 

Cor. You common cry of curs ! whose breath I hate 
As reek o' the rotten fens, whose loves I prize 
As the dead carcases of unburied men 
That do corrupt my air, I banish you ; 
And here remain with your uncertainty ! 
Let every feeble rumour shake your hearts ! 
Your enemies, with nodding of their plumes, 
Fan you into despair ! Have the power still 
To banish your defenders ; till at length 
Your ignorance, — which finds not, till it feels, — 
Making not reservation of yourselves, — 
Still your own foes, — deliver you as most 
Abated captives to some nation 
That won you without blows ! Despising, 
For you, the city, thus I turn my back : 
There is a world elsewhere. 

The people do not care a straw for his scorn. They are 
lost in joy at getting rid of him — 

^Ed. The people's enemy is gone, is gone ! 

Citizens. Our enemy is banish'd ! — He is gone! — Hoo ! hoo ! 
[They all shout and throw up their caps. 

So ends the contest between Coriolanus and the 
tribunes. They and the people are the victors. And we 
may fairly conclude that Shakespeare did not despise the 
cause of the people or its leaders, when we find that the 
leaders are represented throughout as men who have 
kept their heads ; cool, temperate, prudent, but resolute 
to attain their end ; and using steadily and ruthlessly the 



CORIOLANUS 233 

best means for this end. Having won, they are quite 
sober and quiet. They indulge in no boasting, but go 
about their business, congratulating themselves on the 
quiet of Rome. Their just mastership of the stormy 
elements of the people keeps down the anger of the 
partisans of Coriolanus. Every day of quiet makes Corio- 
lanus less missed by his friends, who ' blush that without 
him the world goes well.' Menenius has grown kind 
again to the tribunes, and talks to them as if they were 
nobles. He even criticises Coriolanus. Shakespeare has 
taken pains to lift the struggle of the people into 
our approval. 

Enter Sicinius and Brutus. 
Sic. We hear not of him, neither need we fear him ; 
His remedies are tame i' the present peace 
And quietness o' the people, which before 
Were in wild hurry. Here do we make his friends 
Blush that the world goes well, who rather had, 
Though they themselves did suffer by % behold 
Dissentious numbers pestering streets, than see 
Our tradesmen singing in their shops and going 
About their functions friendly. 

Enter Mekenius. 

Bp.u. We stood to 't in good time. Is this Menenius 1 
Sic. "lis he, 'tis he. ! he is grown most kind 

Of late. Hail, sir ! 
Men. Hail to you both ! 

Sic. Your Coriolanus is not much miss'd, 

But with his friends : the commonwealth doth stand, 

And so would do, were he more angry at it. 
Men. All 's well ; and might have been much better, if 

He could have temporiz'd. 

Sic. This is a happier and more comely time 

Than when these follows ran about the streets 
Crying confusion. 

Nor does this sympathetic representation end here. 
When Coriolanus joins the Volscians, and threatens Rome 
with ruin, the whole city is in wild terror and disturbance ; 
Cominius, Menenius, and the rest of the nobility lose 



23_4 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

their heads. All they can do is to abuse the tribunes. 
Sicinius and Brutus alone are self-controlled and quiet. 
All they say then and afterwards is full of care for Rome, 
for the people, for the patricians who only care for their 
own safety. They speak like steadfast Romans to the 
terrified citizens ; 

Go, masters, get you home : be.not dismay'd : 
These are a side that would be glad to have 
This true which they so seem to fear. Go home, 
And show no sign of fear. 

And the people disperse at once. Afterwards, the tribunes 
are the accepted advisers of Rome. It is they who per- 
suade Menenius to ask peace from Coriolanus; and he 
obeys. They speak like men who know they have done 
right, and who are willing to accept the consequences. 
Even when all seems lost, they do not lose their dignity. 
It is the same when the mob attempts their life. Thus, 
amid the tossing turmoil of Rome, Shakespeare has made 
the leaders of the people's cause the only hope and trust, 
and the quiet powers, of the city. He does not point this 
out. He says nothing. But what he has written stands, 
and it stands for the people's cause in this play against that 
idea of government which Menenius held, and Coriolanus 
exaggerated into its extremes. 

(2) Important and dramatic as this political aspect of 
the play is, it does not take us on to the high levels of 
poetry. From the poetic point of view the fate of Rome is 
inferior in interest to the development and representa- 
tion of the character and fate of Coriolanus. Everything 
else is brought to bear on this. Cominius, Menenius, and 
the rest illustrate him. Aufidius, the soldier, is set over 
against him. His mother, his wife and Valeria bring out 
new elements in his character; the tribunes whip into 
activity his evil and foolish qualities. The whole people 
of Rome are in arms against him. He rises alone before 



CORIOLANUS 235 

us, like a towering rock from a wide and tossing sea. At 
the beginning of the fourth act all eyes are fixed on the 
banished man, as he goes out alone into the friendless 
world — 

Like to a lonely dragon, that his fen 

Makes fear'd and talk'd of more than seen, — 

The fourth and fifth acts tell the results of his action, 
and his fall. The play is almost the play of one man. 

What ruins Coriolanus ? Pride in himself and for him- 
self alone, and the furious choler which, never controlled, 
breaks out when his pride is injured. 1 He has never 
from a boy curbed his violent nature, and his mother 
has encouraged it. He is its victim now. 

The force of circumstance ruins the Brutus of Julius 
Ccesar. It partly spoils the life of Coriolanus. Had he 
bent his nature only a little to circumstance, he might 
have lived honoured in Rome ; and been bettered by the 
bending. Brutus could not have bettered but worsened 
himself by bending to his circumstances. They were 
such that to bend to them would have been to lose his 
moral character. Brutus is overthrown by the Tightness 
of his nature, Coriolanus by the wrongness of his. Rome, 
and not self, is first with Brutus. Self, and not Rome, 
is first with Coriolanus. The cause of freedom is first 
with Brutus, and he dies for it. The cause of his own 
pride is first with Coriolanus, and he dies for himself. 
His pride and fury slay him ; and he deserves his 
fate. When a government reaches the same state, it 

1 Shakespeare, who often thinks of heredity, makes the son of Corio- 
lanus repeat the nature of his father in a boyish fashion, — and a hateful ! 

Val. 0' my word, the father's son; I'll swear 'tis a very pretty boy. O' 
my troth, I looked upon him o' Wednesday half an hour together : has such a 
confirmed countenance. I saw him run after a gilded butterfly ; and when he 
caught it, he let it go again ; and after it again ; and over and over he comes and 
up again ; catched it again ; or whether his fall enraged him, or how 'twas, he did 
so set his teeth and tear it ; 0, I warrant, bow he mammocked it. 

Vol. One on's father's moods. 

Val. Indeed, la, 'tis a noble child. 



236 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

slays itself; but a government dies slowly, an individual 
quickly. 

On the other hand, Coriolanus is brave, eager for fame, 
noble in act and thought when in war, war the very breath 
of his nostrils. He claims to be modest, and is not truly 
so. He loves his mother dearly and his wife ; he is a 
good friend, but he does not love — until the end — any 
of them well enough to sacrifice, for their sake, either the 
vengeance he desires for the galling of his pride, or his 
resolve to fulfil the demands his fiery nature makes upon 
him. This — ' to be true to his nature ' — is his only con- 
science ; and when the nature is selfish, it is the hardest 
selfishness in the world. 

In relation to the people, he is the type of the haughty, 
irresponsible feudal noble, whose only law was his own 
will ; the plague of humanity. The people to Coriolanus 
are a rabble, curs, cowards, not to be trusted, changing 
every moment; peace makes them proud, war terrifies 
them. They are not men but beasts, and to be ruled 
like beasts. In relation to his own class, he is honour- 
able, courteous, even kindly when his nature is not too 
much interfered with. His mother has trained him to 
give a loose rein to his impulses ; and he cannot under- 
stand why she desires him to speak well to the vile 
people. ' Would you have me,' he cries, ' false to my 
nature ? ' 

Pride of this kind is sometimes silent and dignified, 
when there is some other quality in the nature as strong 
as itself and more noble ; but when it devours into itself 
all the other qualities, it becomes almost a frenzy, and 
is entirely devoid of pity. It issues then in a raging 
madness of unbridled temper. This is the case with 
Coriolanus, and it is splendidly wrought out bjr Shake- 
speare. On this swiftly raised choler the tribunes build 
his ruin. Pie is, on account of it, a child in their 



CORIOLANUS 237 

hands. When they have lashed him into fury, he loses 

the game — 

Bru. Put him to choler straight. He hath heen us'd 
Ever to conquer, and to have his worth 
Of contradiction : heing once chaf 'd, he cannot 
Be rein'd again to temperance : then he speaks 
What 's in his heart ; and that is there which looks 
With us to break his neck. 

Yet, in his farewell to his own people, he is as gentle, 
courteous, brave and steady as he is the opposite to the 
citizens. To his own caste he is the ' perfect gentleman,' 
to his mother the revering and loving son. That he should 
be so fine a character among his own class makes his con- 
duct to those not of his class all the worse. Shakespeare 
understood the ruthless pride of the feudal noblesse to its 
last grain. And it is like his infinite variety to intro- 
duce between the furious scenes of Coriolanus's battle 
with the people, and the drear misfortunes of his lonely 
fall into treason to his country, the sweet and tender 
scene with which the fourth act begins. He bids farewell 
to his mother, wife, to Menenius, Cominius, and the young 
nobility of Rome outside the gate of the city; and he 
speaks nobly to his mother — 

Cor. Come leave your tears : a brief farewell : the beast 
With many heads butts me away. Nay, mother, 
Where is your ancient courage 1 you were us'd 
To say extremity was the trier of spirits ; 
That common chances common men could bear ; 
That when the sea was calm all boats alike 
Show'd mastership in floating ; fortune's blows, 
When most struck home, being gentle, wounded, craves 
A noble cunning : you were us'd to load me 
With precepts that would make invincible 
The heart that conn'd them. 

Nor is his farewell to his friends less gentle, less noble. 
Yet in the midst of it, Shakespeare makes us feel that 
his rage is only for the moment at rest. His wife inter- 
rupts him. He cannot bear it. He turns on her angrily 



238 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

— ' Nay, I prithee, woman.' His mother is afraid of his 
imprudence, of his going away alone. And when Corio- 
lanus hears the doubt, even though it is his mother who 
expresses it, his temper almost breaks out — ' O ye gods!' 
he cries. The waves are still running high in his soul ; 
his solitude will be dark with wrath and vengeance. 
That is within his heart which will not cease to gnaw ; 
the snake of a galled pride, the selfish biting of 
revenge. 

Formerly, he fought for fame rather than for his 
country, but the two happened to be coincident. There- 
fore, love of his country was attributed to him. Now that 
he is divided from his country, angered pride is stronger 
than what seemed love of his country, and he betrays 
his country. The treason the tribunes accused him of 
is now really his. He is half conscious of this, and he 
imputes the change — to what ? Not to himself at all, 
but to the work of circumstance. This is a common 
mental trick of those who have spoilt their life by self- 
indulgence. 

O world ! thy slippery turns. Friends now fast sworn, 

Whose double bosoms seem to wear one heart, 

Whose house, whose bed, whose meal, and exercise, 

Are still together, who twin, as 'twere, in love 

"[Inseparable, shall within this hour, 

On a dissension of a doit, break out 

To bitterest enmity : so, fellest foes, 

Whose passions and whose plots have broke their sleep 

To take the one the other, by some chance, 

Some trick not worth an egg, shall grow dear friends 

And interjoin their issues. So with me : 

My birth-place hate I, and my love's upon 

This enemy town. 

This is the pure nonsense of self-excusing pride. 
Friendships and enmities are not broken or united in 
that fashion. When in that fashion love is broken, it 
proves that, on one side at least, there has been no real 



CORIOLANUS 239 

love at all ; only that self has been at the bottom of the 
apparent love. Coriolanus never loved any one half as 
much as he loved himself. Even his love of his mother 
was founded on her encouragement of the self within him. 

In the whole of the striking scene with Aufidius, when 
he declares his treason and his greed for vengeance, 
Coriolanus is savagely true to what he calls his nature. 
He declares boldly that it is spite and anger that bring 
him to his enemies' camp ; he desires no mercy ; he will 
not abate a jot of himself to save his life. If Aufidius will 
help him to avenge himself — well ; if not, why he will die. 
His treason is complete. He does the only thing in the 
world which would turn his friends in Rome against him. 

Deeper and deeper, then, is the loneliness in which he 
moves. The Volscians, however glad they are to have 
him, know him as a traitor to his country, one who 
has done that which no common soldier in Corioli would 
do. Menenius, Cominius, look on him with fear and 
pain. His mother, wife, and child feel him to be their 
enemy. He has proved that the tribunes and people 
were right. To this, at last, to this supreme solitude, 
self, unrestrained, leads a man. To this treason to 
himself, his country, and his friends, a furious temper, 
backed by pride, conducts its victim. Coriolanus accuses 
his ill-luck; but he is his own destroyer. That which 
overwhelms him is not destiny, but his own creation. 
Nothing follows which is not the inevitable result of the 
hideous position in which he has placed himself. And 
Shakespeare has wrought out magnificently this inevit- 
ableness of ruin. Aufidius is the instrument of the fate 
of Coriolanus. He shows the bottom of his heart in his 
answer to his former enemy — 

Martins, Marcius ! 
Each word thou hast spoke hath weeded from my heart 
A root of ancient envy. 



240 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

But it is only rooted out because he sees his ancient foe 
in the gloom of misfortune. Envy is too subtle a devil 
to leave the heart so soon: and Shakespeare knows its 
fashions. Moreover with envy ever goes hate. It is 
envy's boon companion. And Aufidius's hate was deep. 

Where I find him, were it 
At home, upon my brother's guard, even there 
Against the hospitable canon, would I 
Wash my fierce hand in 's heart. 

Such a hatred does not die; it only sleeps for a time. 
We have a comfortable way of thinking that our vices 
have gone when the reason of them is momentarily 
taken away. It was agreeable to Aufidius at first to 
be magnanimous to his rival, to be able to say, 'Poor 
Coriolanus,' and to give him half his power. That 
flattered his patronising pride. But the moment Corio- 
lanus again took precedence, envy came back with seven 
more devils than before ; and in this resurrection of envy 
and its results lies the rest of the drama. The envy 
of Aufidius is deepened by the pride of Coriolanus, who 
will even in exile have the first place ; and he uses this 
insolent pride, as the tribunes used it before, to work the 
ruin of Coriolanus, who had learned nothing from all his 
pain and follies, who was still himself his only law, his 
only right. 

It is characteristic of Shakespeare's work that he 
introduces here, after Aufidius and Coriolanus meet, a 
humorous episode in the talk of the servants. The two 
leaders deceive themselves into an apparent friendship, 
each ignorant of what their passions of pride and envy 
are sure to produce. But the servants see much further 
than their masters. They see the folly of both these 
great men and laugh at it, especially at that of their 
master. Their talk is an excellent piece of wit, of human 
nature ; and also of their class, when they are mere hire- 



CORIOLANUS 241 

lings. They have not a vestige of care for their country, 
only for their own interests. ' Let me have war, say I ; it 
exceeds peace as day does night ; it 's sprightly, waking, 
audible, full of vent. . . . The wars for my money. I 
hope to see Romans as cheap as Volscians.' And it may be 
that Shakespeare meant a satire on the class feeling of 
the nobility of Rome by noting something of the same 
kind in a different and a lower class. 

Then we find Coriolanus worshipped as a leader, not as 
a man, by the Volscian soldiery : apparently on the peak 
of fortune. But he is really more lost, more alone than 
ever. No one loves him. He can have no communion 
with his comrades. It is almost pitiable to hear his 
appeals to Aufidius, who hates him, to tell him what 
to do. Then in his solitude, his affections, the best part 
of him, which his pride had smothered, awake again. 
Though he repulses Menenius, who comes to implore 
grace for Rome, we feel that he loves him. He longs to 
see his mother, his wife and son, but his position is such 
that he dare not satisfy his longing. It is a piteous case, 
for if we add to his vast loneliness this intense and silent 
emotion of natural affection, whose indulgence is for- 
bidden, he becomes (as Shakespeare's sympathy with 
sorrow meant him to become) an object of noble pity to 
the audience — and perhaps to the gods. 

At last the desire of his heart is given him as he sits 
alone in his great chair, encompassed by the envious 
Volscians. His mother, wife and son, their friend Valeria, 
approach him to beg for peace. The home-loving man in 
him, the only soft part in his nature, long repressed, long 
unoccupied, sees in them his home, remembers all the 
past, and breaks forth like a torrent, which in vain he 
tries to dam ; 

My wife comes foremost ; then the honoured mould 
Wherein this trunk was fram'd ; and in her hand 



242 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

The grandchild to her blood. But out, affection ! 

All bond and privilege of nature, break ! 

Let it be virtuous to be obstinate. 

What is that curtsy worth ? or those doves' eyes, 

Which can make gods forsworn ? I melt and am not 

Of stronger earth than others. 

This is Coriolanus at his best, thrilled by those natural 
affections which last longest, and which in their natural 
working are the best medicine for the selfish heart. 
Coriolanus fights against them ; his promise to Aufidius, 
his vow of revenge beat back his yie]ding and forgiveness. 
But when his mother finally turns from mere arguing the 
question to her ancient way with him, and claims his 
reverence for her motherhood ; and then, when he is still 
silent, breaks into scorn of him, and bids him, repudiat- 
ing him, seek his family among the Yolscians — 

Come, let us go : 
This fellow had a Volscian to his mother ; 
His wife is in Corioli, and his child 
Like him by chance. Yet give us our dispatch : 
I am hush'd until our city be a-fire, 
And then I '11 speak a little. 

why, then, Coriolanus can bear no more. His lonely 
pride is shattered by the dominance of what is tender, 
good, and natural in him. For the first time in his life 
he is truly unselfish. He gives up his most passionate 
desire, revenge. He puts away pride and anger, the 
tyrannic qualities of his nature ; and he does this know- 
ing, at least suspecting, that this means his death — and it 
does mean it. 

The man is redeemed. The repentance is not too late 
for honour, not too late for moral greatness; for thus 
conquered, he is at last great, having won, by renoun- 
cing all that he once thought were the sources of his 
fame, immortal fame. But he is not freed from the 
results of his long wrong-doing. Repentance is too late 
to save his life ; and that he knows he is doomed makes 



CORIOLANUS 243 

his act the nobler. Thus Shakespeare veils the perish- 
ing man with tenderness, pity, and admiration. We 
forgive what we hated in him in the past. His wife 
and mother, knowing he is lost, yet went home with peace 
in their heart, and Rome remembered only his fame as 
a warrior. Over his dead body the patricians and the 
tribunes came to respect each other more. The dead 
Coriolanus was greater than the living. 

Nothing is more impressive than the contrast, at the 
end of the play, of the triumph and joy of Rome at her 
deliverance, of the mother and wife of Coriolanus lauded 
to the skies while death and the passion of death must 
have been in their hearts, with the wild scene of the 
conspirators and Aufidius closing, in envy and revenge, 
round the dying Coriolanus at Antium. He dies like a 
lion ringed by the hunters; alone to the close, brave, 
angry, all himself to the very last breath. Aufidius, 
playing on his choler, calls him ' traitor ' — the word has 
followed him — then ' boy.' And Coriolanus, smitten into 
his own furious anger, speaks with such contempt of 
the Yolscians that he drives them to his slaughter. One 
of the lords, looking on him dead, speaks what might 
serve as his epitaph 

His own impatience 
Takes from Aufidius a great part of blame. 
Let 's make the best of it. 

Yet, Aufidius is not ignoble. He can see more clearly 
than either patrician or plebeian what is of a fine nature 
in Coriolanus. He has not been as much subjected as 
they to the worry of his pride and rage. Even when he 
most envies Coriolanus, he can make a judgment of his 
character and career — as he does to the lieutenant at the 
end of Act iv. — which is at once tolerant and wise, and 
which, in itself, is a most noble piece of poetry. It is 



244 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

given almost against his will, for he is as determined as 
the tribunes were to put an end to Coriolanus. 

When, Caius, Rome is thine, 
Thou art poor'st of all ; then shortly thou art mine 

He has now done this work ; he has sated his hatred and 
envy, and thinks it politic to seem sorry for his fate. It 
is not true sorrow ; envy has no grief ; it is only to seem 
noble that he says. 

My rage is gone, 

And I am struck with sorrow. Take him up : 

Help, three o' the chiefest soldiers ; I '11 be one. 

Beat thou the drum, that it speak mournfully ; 

Trail your steel pikes. Though in this city he 

Hath widow'd and unchilded many a one, 

Which to this hour bewail the injury, 

Yet he shall have a noble memory. 

Assist. 

Meanwhile the feast is high in Rome. 

Finally, there are the women, and the relation between 
Coriolanus and his mother. The tragedy is set in the 
early days of the Republic, before the days when luxury 
had eaten up simplicity. The life, even of the great 
nobles, was austere and quiet, the women lovers of their 
home and keepers at home. Shakespeare, who always 
loved simplicity of life, was pleased to draw with a still and 
gracious hand the household of Volumnia and Yirgilia, 
and the visit to it of their friend Valeria. Its charm 
and dignity are not in any splendour, but in the characters 
of its women. Virgilia is as quiet as a forest lake. She 
will not leave the house while Coriolanus is away. The 
streets and shows of Rome shall not see her till he 
returns, and she is firm as a rock in this. A stead- 
fast resolvedness attends on her quietness. Silence is 
her chief speech. All through the play she scarcely 
speaks. Yet she is alive before us. Only the greatest 
artist could, with a few touches here and there, placed 
exactly where they should be, and in fitness to their 



CORIOLANUS 245 

place, paint a whole character with such force and 
livingness that she remains for ever clear, for ever interest- 
ing. Shakespeare had done this for Cordelia ; he does it 
again for Virgilia. When Volumnia praises the battle-rage 
of Coriolanus, and extols his blood and wounds, Virgilia 
cries — 

His bloody brow ! Oh, Jupiter, no blood ! 

Heavens bless my lord from fell Aufidius ! 

And we know her heart from that moment. When 
Coriolanus meets her on his triumphant return from 
Corioli, he meets her with this word — 

My gracious silence, hail ! 
Wouldst thou have laugh'd had I come coffin'd home, 
That weep'st to see me triumph 1 Ah ! my dear, 
Such eyes the widows in Corioli wear, 
And mothers that lack sons. 

And we seem to see in the tender words, and in the 
admiration of ' My gracious silence,' the secret married life 
and love of Yirgilia and her stormy husband. All through 
the long talk of Volumnia with the senators and Corio- 
lanus about the consulship, Virgilia does not say one 
word. The only time she breaks out into speech is 
against the tribunes after the banishment of her hus- 
band, and her strong words then are sufficiently motived 
by the occasion. Twice only does she speak in that great 
scene when with his mother she comes to plead for Rome, 
and the secret depths and even fierceness of her Roman 
nature are shown in the force and tenderness with which 
she urges her right as wife and mother on her husband. 
'Thou shalt tread,' says Volumnia, 'if thou march to 
Rome, upon thy mother's womb,' 

That brought thee to this world. 
ViR. Ay, and mine, 

That brought you forth this boy, to keep your name 
Living to time. 



246 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

Only long silence can concentrate so much into a few 
words ! 1 And we hear of her no more. 

Valeria is a lively sketch of a great lady. The patrician 
note is in all her speech when she comes to visit Virgilia. 
She finds her sewing, and bids her come out into the 
movement of Rome. What are household cares to life ? 
Why think of a husband when there is so much to 
do and see? — 'all the yarn Penelope spun in Ulysses' 
absence did but fill Ithaca full of moths.' She praises 
Virgilia's boy — '0' my word, the father's son: I'll swear 
'tis a very pretty boy — he has such a confirmed coun- 
tenance,' and she tells with no pity how he mammocked 
a butterfly. ' Come, go with me ; turn your solemnness 
out of doors, Virgilia.' 

She is a noble, idle, pleasant, honourable, free-spoken 
lady. Yet, when misfortune is near, she is as dignified as 
she is silent. She says not one word when she meets, with 
Volumnia, Coriolanus ; no, not even when she hears that 
splendid praise of her which has made her immortal. 

The noble sister of Publicola, 
The moon of Rome ; chaste as the icicle 
That 's curdied by the frost from purest snow, 
And hangs on Dian's temple : dear Valeria ! 

Volumnia is more fully drawn. She is the Roman 
patrician and the Roman mother. The reverence of 
Coriolanus for her is a record of the ancient Roman 
honour for the ties of home, especially for motherhood. 
She is not only a mother; she is as much a patrician 
as her son, but without his furious temper; on the 
contrary, with a good share of politic prudence. She 
has the faults of her class and her position, otherwise 
she is a noble woman. These faults are, however, too 
much for her womanly tenderness — and for her honour. 
Her honour slips away when she advises Coriolanus to 

1 Volumnia's words are Plutarch's, Virgilia's Shakespeare's. 



CORIOLANUS 247 

deceive the people in order to get the consulship. He 
is true, and he resents giving the lie to his nature. She 
excuses the fraud by the practice of war. It is lawful to 
deceive an enemy, and to her the people are the foe. 
As to her tenderness, she has it for her son and friends, 
but it is tenderness modified by the hunger for fame, 
for glory in war. The thoughtless militarism which has 
in all ages infected her class has made her its victim. 
She loves to see her son's wounds which tell of his might 
and bravery. She has no care for the wounds of his 
men, for the wretched people who are victimised to 
make the fame of her son. She boasts in a terrible 
phrase of the terror and woe he causes. The trumpets 
sound as he returns. ' These,' she cries, ' are the ushers 
of Marcius : before him he carries noise, and behind him 
he leaves tears.' 

When we come to the close relationship between her 
son and her, we come to a serious study. They stand 
together in an inner circle, isolated, as it were, from the 
rest. When the political interest, even when the fate of 
Coriolanus in the play, are dimmed in memory, the 
mother and the son still dwell in our thoughts. Their 
relationship is the inmost heart of the drama, where the 
deepest affections play. The love that is between them 
glorifies them, and creates round the haughty woman and 
the terrible warrior the gracious atmosphere of home. 
We retire, from time to time, from the noise of Rome and 
Volscian wars, into an island of domestic peace and steady 
affection of which Volumnia and Coriolanus are the 
source. Virgilia sits and sews, Volumnia talks to her 
of her husband and her own son ; the boy plays in the 
garden ; Valeria drops in to gossip ; and here Coriolanus — 
his violence and pride lost in his reverence and love of 
his mother who admires and loves him, and herself in 
him — finds his better self. Not till he is divided from 



248 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

his mother is he lost. The mother lives in the son. She 

has made him from his birth; both of them dwell on 

that long education. The son is the mother in a man. 

His fighting is what she would have done had she been a 

man. Had she been the wife of Hercules, she would have 

taken half his labours on herself. Her pride in her class is 

his. And his scorn of the people is hers. She taught 

him 

To call them woollen vassals, things created 
To buy and sell with groats, to show bare heads 
In congregations, to yawn, be still, and wonder, 
When one but of my ordinance stood up 
To speak of peace or war. 

Her love of fame has been his inspiration. Every 
charge he has made on the enemies of Rome, every 
wound he has received, have been made and received 
with the voice of his mother in his ears ; and she has, in 
thought and admiration, made the charges and received 
the wounds. ' ! he is wounded ; I thank the gods for 't,' 
she cries, when he comes home from Corioli. For his 
glory she has lived. One honour yet remains — he must 
be consul. 

I have liv'd 
To see inherited my very wishes, 
And the buildings of my fancy : only 
There 's one thing wanting which I doubt not but 
Our Rome will cast upon thee. 

They stand apart and together. The honour we give 
to the son we give also to the mother who is its source. 
The pity we finally give to the son in his ruin, we give in 
fuller stream to the mother. 

Yet there is a difference — a difference belonging to 
sex. The pride of the man has no policy, the violence 
of his temper has no self-control. She has both. In 
that scene, where his friends press Coriolanus to coax 
the people for the sake of the consulship, his pride 



CORIOLANUS 249 

refuses their request. Volumnia loves his pride; it is 
her own creation. But it were well it should be modified 
by policy. And she argues, till in her impetuous arguing 
she contradicts herself, and declares that his pride is not 
of her own making; 'Owe thy pride thyself.' Here is 
her advice ; 

You might have been enough the man you are 
With striving less to be so : . . . 

Pray be counsell'd ; 
I have a heart of mettle apt as yours, 
But yet a brain that leads my use of anger 
To better vantage. . . . 

Prithee now, 
Go and be ruled : although I know thou hadst rather 
Follow thine enemy in a fiery gulf 
Than flatter him in a bower. 

And when he refuses to bend his truth to flatter the 
mob, Volumnia, employing the argument of her mother- 
hood, displays, in what she says, her own character and 
her^ son's ; and where they divide from one another — 

At thy choice then : 
To beg of thee it is my more dishonour 
Than thou of them. Come all to ruin : let 
Thy mother rather feel thy pride than fear 
Thy dangerous stoutness, for I mock at death 
With as big a heart as thou. Do as thou list. 
Thy valiantness was mine, thou suck'dst it from me, 
But owe thy pride thyself. 

Yet his fury is his mother's fault, who was even pleased 
when as a boy he let loose his rages, for she thought of 
what they would make him do in battle. But now, when 
his consulship depends on his keeping his temper, she 
advises him in vain. She herself has learned self- 
restraint; to gain her end she has a woman's hypocrisy. 
But yet, when the cruel hours come, she is like her son, 
borne beyond all self-restraint, all fortitude, into raging- 
words. ' The hoarded plague of the gods requite your love,' 
she cries to the tribunes who have banished Coriolanus. 



250 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

I '11 tell thee what : yet go : 
Nay, but thou shalt stay too : I would my son 
Were in Arabia, and thy tribe before him, 
His good sword in his hand. 

And when the tribunes have left, the storm still rages 
in her heart ; 

I would the gods had nothing else to do 
But to confirm my curses ! 

Anger 's my meat ; I sup upon myself. 

And when the parting comes, her anger and her love 
break out together ; 

Now the red pestilence strike all trades in Konie, 
And occupations perish ! 

We see the fierce temper which, unmodified by her 
womanly self-control, she has handed on to her son. 
It ruins him, and the bitter consciousness of that must 
have been her dreadful punishment, when it made him 
a traitor to his country. 

When that terrible day came, and she saw her son 
arrayed against Rome, that which was greatest in her 
character — the solid courage, the invincible fortitude of 
the woman — opened out to undo the evil she had made 
in her son. She uses her motherhood to conquer him. 
That which is deeper in her even than motherhood 
appears. Her country is more to her than her son or 
her son's wrongs. His wrong against Rome is greater 
than all the wrongs done to him by Rome; and she 
speaks against him for Rome. Most of her speeches are 
taken directly from Plutarch, but the exquisite tender- 
ness in the scene is Shakespeare's. It is Shakespeare 
who makes Coriolanus turn to his wife and cry with an 
exile's passion — 

! a kiss 
Long as my exile, sweet as my revenge ! 

Then the rest is between the mother and the son, between 



CORIOLANUS 251 

these two who, in the isolation of their long love, are 

alwa} r s alone. He kneels to her in the depth of duty. 

When she kneels to him, she thinks it wrong, but it is 

for Rome. He knows it is wrong ; it strikes him into 

a passion of denial. 

What is this ? 
Your knees to me ! to your corrected son ! 
Then let the pebbles on the hungry beach 
Fillip the stars ; then let the mutinous -winds 
Strike the proud cedars 'gainst the fiery sun, 
Murd'ring impossibility, to make 
What cannot be, slight work. 

He is wrought into wild hyperbole — Shakespeare's way, 
and the way of his time, when passion was represented 
as supreme. Then Volumnia shows him Valeria, his son, 
his wife, and the form of these appeals is out of Shake- 
speare's heart. The rest, till Coriolanus yields, is from 
Plutarch, but Shakespeare, by heightening the phrases 
into passion and by his melody, lifts the prose of Plutarch 
into poetry. Moreover, and on this he dwells more than 
Plutarch, he makes it quite clear that Volumnia abjures 
her motherhood if her son will not save his country. 
The golden tie will then be broken. All that was dear 
to her in him — his honour, his good fame, his filial piety 
— are then lost, and his life accursed for ever. They are 
no longer one, but two, if he do not yield to her. So far 
Plutarch is his source, but at the close, when she turns 
to scorn, and with a bitter scoff flings her motherhood 
away, the terrible phrase is Shakespeare's own 

Come, let us go : 
This fellow had a Volscian to his mother. 

Then Coriolanus, that being shattered which was his 
very life, breaks down into a passion of repentance ; 

mother, mother ! 
What have you done 1 

And these two, whose love is at the heart of the play, 



252 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

are again at one. They part in peace. But that has 
been which is irreparable. A mighty rending asunder 
has divided this island of love for ever. The sea rolls deep 
between Rome and Corioli. Mother and son look at one 
another with love, but it is across a gulf of intolerable 
regret. Yet, the division is not for long ; it cannot long 
be borne. Coriolanus goes to his death, his mother to 
her sorrow and her failure. And it is better, perhaps, 
for him in his swift death than for Yolumnia in her 
life amid the rejoicing of Rome. When the news came 
that he had died in a brawl and by Aufidius, hov; could 
she live with all the past in her heart ? 



IX 
WINTER'S TALE 

The story is taken from Greene's Pandosto, and to be the 
origin of so dulcet a play is enough for the praise of 
Greene. All we need here to know is that it is one of 
the dramas Shakespeare wrote in his latest period, after 
the great tragedies and the Roman plays. Its temper 
then is the temper of the last years of his life, and that 
temper is full of the experience of a man, and }^et of the 
spirit of youth. Winters Tale is so varied in events and 
characters, aDd the characters play in and out of one 
another with such a charm of contrast, that the surprises 
of intellect and emotion are as numerous as they are 
pleasant. And these surprises are yet so mellowed by 
the temperance and beauty of the poetic tongue in which 
they are given, and so carefully motived, that they do not 
startle us more than noble art permits. Of course, the 
interval of sixteen years in the middle is awkward. The 
impression, it is said, of two plays instead of one is made 
on us; the unity of the action is too rudely broken. But 
there is, at the end, the impression of a spiritual unity 
when the ruin wrought by Leontes' jealousy of Polixenes 
is repaired by the love of the son of Polixenes and the 
daughter of Leontes, and in the new atmosphere of their 
love Hermione rc-embraces Leontes, and this is the true 
action of the piece. The sixteen years are then like a 
dream-interval, and seem naturally to belong to a tale 
told on a Winter's Night ; Xct,/xept.vbs oveipos, ore /jbrjKiarac 
at vvferes. 



254 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

The building of such a tale necessitates a great variety. 
We pass suddenly from the life of courts to that of a 
pastoral village, and from the village back to the court ; 
and throughout the changes the mastery of the dramatist 
over the extremes of human life is easy and complete. 
We pass from the destroying jealousy of Leontes to the 
tender idyll of Perdita and Florizel ; from the blunt scold- 
ing of Paulina to the grave dignity of Hermione; from 
the top of joy in Perdita's heart to the abyss in which 
her love seems shattered ; from the maiden whiteness of 
Perdita and the honesty of the shepherd to the rejoicing 
roguery and gross jests of Autolycus — and we pass through 
all these changes without any shock, the fitness of speech 
to each character is so finished, the truth to nature so 
convincing. 

It is a Winter's Tale, to be told in the firelight ; with 
enough fantasy in it to charm the children, and enough 
passion to make the elders pensive. The pastoral episode 
of the disguised Prince and the shepherdess-Princess 
who prefer love to thrones, the resurrection of the statue 
into Hermione, the child exposed in the desert-country, 
the bear who devours the servant of the jealous king, the 
discovery of Perdita's birth, are all linked to common 
folk-tale, have its sentiment and breathe its air. The 
land also is the land of romance, where geographical and 
historical realities are subjected both by Greene and 
Shakespeare to the play of the imagination. We sail into 
Bohemia from Sicily. Even Apollo has become romantic. 
As usual, the classic revival plays in and out of the 
romance of Shakespeare. Delphi is still sought to solve 
a doubtful question. The temple is still served by the 
priests, the rites and groves still inspire awe; and all 
the time ' that rare Italian master, Julio Romano,' is 
painting in Rome. That other element of the Elizabethan 
Pastoral is also here. Florizel and Perdita find their best 



WINTER'S TALE 255 

parallels in the shepherds and maidens of Sidney and 
Spenser, in the Arcadia and the Faerie Queen. There 
is no need to trace them further back. Lastly, we slide 
in the very middle of the play over sixteen years, and 
claim the right of the sovereign imagination to do so, 
since it is in his power, as in that of Time, 

To o'erthrow law, and in one self-born hour 
To plant and o'erwhelm custom. 

The introductory scene is wrought with Shakespeare's 
usual art of preparation and explanation. Camillo and 
his friend dwell on the old friendship of Leontes and 
Polixenes till it fills the thought of the audience. They 
relate, and the point is important, that the two kings have 
not met for many years. 

It was skilful of Shakespeare to insist on this friendship. 
For on its sudden breaking the knot of the drama which 
has to be untied is made. And the breaking up of it is 
half suggested by the reiterated insistence of Camillo and 
Archidamus on its constancy. Their confidence appears 
to fly in the face of the known mutability of the course 
of the world. The heavens seem so sunny that we pre- 
sage that the gods will be jealous. It is against experi- 
ence to believe that friendship, when it has been the 
friendship of boys, and when long absence has intervened, 
can continue to be in age what it was in youth. Inter- 
changed letters do not record the change of character 
which the long years have made. We think we have 
been living together. The fact is, we have steadily 
deviated from one another. Moreover, it is quite possible 
that each has, in absence, idealised the other, and when 
they meet, the shock is indeed a disillusion. Neither 
is the man the other knew. A gulf opens then be- 
tween them. Efforts are made to bridge the gulf. They 
only deepen it. Affections of this kind, being forced, fly 



256 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

further apart. At last, wearied by this unnatural state 
of things, and by its half- falsehood, we know that we have 
deceived ourselves, and are angry with ourselves and with 
our friend. Some slight circumstance intervenes, like 
Hermione beseeching Polixenes ; and the long-repressed 
irritation, catching on to some latent evil passion in our 
nature, like jealousy, explodes in a moment into hatred, 
repulsion, or at least indifference. The soil in the heart of 
Leontes had been charged, now and for some time past, 
with anger, suspicion, with a kind of hypocrisy, with false- 
ness, and with all the evil elements which come into us 
when we are dreadfully bored with some one we once 
loved, and conceal our boredom. Polixenes had been stay- 
ing nine months and more with Leontes. No wise man 
would expose his friend to so severe a trial. Polixenes 
must have been something of a good-natured fool; and 
his conversation confirms that judgment. 

Again, as part of this preparatory work, observe the art 
by which Shakespeare, in this first conversation, secures 
our pity for Mamillius, the frank and princely son of 
Leontes. He is soon to die of sorrow for his mother; 
and the appearance of him is so slight in the play that 
it seems difficult to make us feel tragically for his death. 
Therefore, at the beginning, he is drawn by Camillo in so 
happy and bright a light, that we long for him to live. 
We see the gallant boy, the promise of the kingdom, 
riding on the top of the wave of youth. This first sketch 
is afterwards intensified by that all -charming scene 
between him and his mother, in which Shakespeare im- 
mortalises boyhood. There is nothing more attractive in 
his work. And then, in a few days, this gallant piece 
of nature, who ' made old hearts fresh,' is dead of grief 
and shame, and by a father's guilt. All other genius in 
literature lowers its helm before such masterly sketching 
as this. Yet Shakespeare's finish is just as masterly. 



WINTER'S TALE 257 

Then the second scene takes us at once into the break- 
ing of the friendship between the kings, into the sudden 
rising into storm of the jealousy of Leontes. Sudden in 
its explosion, it had been long growing, unconsciously, in 
his heart. Its origin is slight; the foremost character 
of jealousy is unreasonableness; yet Shakespeare, with his 
fine skill, does not leave it without some motive. He 
makes it spring out of the frank, impetuous, unself- 
conscious character of Hermione. She speaks as freely and 
affectionately to Polixenes as she would to a brother. Her 
husband has asked her to do this. Then, she is at ease 
with her husband's early friend, and talks to him on that 
common ground with the freedom of unconscious inno- 
cence. Moreover, she has lived in these pleasant relations 
with him for nearly a year. He is going, and refuses to 
stay. Leontes has asked his wife to persuade him to stay. 
He sees her press him, touch his hand ; scattered drifts of 
slight suspicions coalesce; and in a moment jealousy leaps 
from smouldering ash into roaring flame. It is the way 
of that selfish passion. 

Leontes creeps up to them ; the spying of jealousy, one 
of its most degrading but constant habits, has begun. 
Then Shakespeare marks its outburst in a single phrase. 
1 Is he won yet ? ' asks Leontes. Hermione answers, ' He '11 
stay, my lord ! ' And Leontes growls to himself, ' At my 
request he would not.' Jealousy, we see, is native to 
Leontes. It arises from within. But up to this time it 
has been a sleeping devil in him. Till now the jealous 
nature has had no reason to awaken. No one has, till 
now, met his wife on equal terms. But, at last, partly 
motived by friendship having changed into weariness and 
nervous disgust, it rises furiously and destroys for a time 
everything but itself; all other passions, thoughts, and 
memories; his wife, his child, his friends, his courtesy, 
his reason. It awakens the brutality which we derive 
R 



258 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

from the brutes and which civilisation subdues. Jealousy 
is always subject to foul thoughts, and it pleases its anger 
to express them with the savage grossness Leontes uses. 
It makes him also fierce and cruel as a tiger. It forces 
him to suspect the goodness of his friends ; makes him his 
own scorn, and the ridicule of the world. And finally, 
it crushes out all the noble qualities of his nature, even 
his honour, and is absolute tyrant. 

The nature of Leontes is naturally noble ; that we see 
afterwards. Even Paulina (and after she has known his 
crimes) confesses his nobility. But his nature is also 
weak; he is weak even in his repentance. Violence, 
it is said, goes with weakness ; and the more furious the 
violence, the greater the weakness. 1 Again, violence is 
often the refuge of that ignorance of what to do in trouble 
which results from the wavering of weak-mindedness. 
Then, again, the weak man knows he is weak, and is 
violent, as Richard n. was, to hide his weakness from 
himself, or to prove himself strong. He who knows his 
strength has no desire to prove what he knows, and 
is quiet. 

Excess of passion adds a new weakness to the natural 
weakness of Leontes. ' I have tremor cordis on me,' ' My 
heart dances, but not for joy — not joy.' Enervated by 
unbroken happiness, he has no guard against the invasion 
of jealousy. It reaches its full and,maddest height in him. 
There is not one touch of any other passion, of any other 
thought but jealous thought, while the tempest lasts. He 
is not a man; he is jealousy itself. 

This tempest of passion is brief: it dies as suddenly as 
it arose. Evil naturally exhausts itself, and all the more 

1 These studies of violence as weakness are frequent in Shakespeare. 
For example, at the back of the pride and raging of Coriolanus, which he 
mistakes for strength, there is a weakness of character of which Shake- 
speare, with great skill, makes us feel that his mother and his friends 
were conscious. 



WINTER'S TALE 259 

if the nature it attacks be good. And Leontes, originally 
a good but weak man, repents with as much passion as 
he sinned. But a good passion does not exhaust itself; 
on the contrary it grows in power. And then, the wrong- 
doer, having done deeds meet for repentance, gets the 
good, but not till then, of the evil trouble he has battled 
through. He suffers the inevitable punishment, but he 
conquers a higher goodness than he had when as yet his 
goodness was untried. And in the end Leontes attains 
full purification. Weakness in him becomes strength; 
pride, humility ; remorse, repentance; sudden judgments, 
temperate acts; sorrow, sympathy with others; punish- 
ment, a means of progress ; violence, steadfast obedience 
to law. As to his native jealousy, it has been worked 
through. It cannot occur again. And its complete 
destruction means the destruction also of the other evil 
passions. When one passion, raised to its highest pitch 
of evil force, has been extinguished, there is no need to 
care about conquering the others. They are alread}^ 
beaten. For the thing to crush, in order to be self-con- 
queror, is not the passions, but their excess ; and if we 
conquer excess in one, we conquer it in all. For then we 
have strengthened the will to win the good which is 
opposite to the evil in which we have been entangled ; 
and if we have made the will strong, it is as strong against 
all the passions as it has been against one. The work is 
done, and needs not twice doing. The whole nature of 
Leontes is tempered into steadfast calm. 

Some might expect that emotion, through over-indul- 
gence of which he had erred, would be (in this passage 
into quietude) chilled ; that temperance of feeling might 
be equivalent to coldness of heart. But that is not the 
truth of things. Feeling is made deeper by restraint of 
it. It were well to compare Leontes' affections and their 
expression in the first act with the same affections and 



260 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

their expression in the fifth act. Quiet intensity now 
belongs to them. 

Some have complained of tho suddenness of this jealous 
outbreak. But I have already hinted that Shakespeare 
intended us to understand that it had been brooding for 
a long time. Suspicions had arisen and been put aside. 
But at last they concentrated, and then the volcanic forces, 
long repressed, broke into full fury. Here, in less than 
a day, Leontes dishonours, and to a friend, the wife he has 
known for many years; degrades his son, employs the 
blackest treachery against his friend, urges murder on his 
councillor, all to glut his revenge. Polixenes then escapes 
with Camillo, and their flight is new fuel to the passion 
of Leontes. It proves to him the guilt of Polixenes. 

From this scene of base passion we change to one of 
homelike peace and charm, in the room where Hermione 
and her son are talking. Her motherhood is in tune 
with her frank and open character. The boy is her 
very son, as fearless, as natural as she is. He plays 
with his mother as if she were not only his mother but 
his friend. A pleasant chaff passes between them, full 
of charm. This sweet and deep friendship enhances 
the natural piety of the child to his mother; brings a 
greater weight and delight to the boy's affection; and 
together they account for the intensity of love and 
sorrow which afterwards breaks Mamillius' heart when 
he learns his mother's fate and is forced to abhor his 
father. Poor little man ! — orphaned of both his parents 
while they are still alive. No wonder his gallant bright- 
ness is quenched in death ! 

This gracious interlude, in which the name and inten- 
tion of the play are given by Mamillius ; 

A sad tale 's best for winter : 
I have one of sprites and goblins, 

is in full dramatic contrast with the pity and terror of the 



WINTER'S TALE 261 

next, when Leontes breaks in like a maniac upon its 
peace, resolute to denounce his wife before his lords. He 
does not speak to her at first, but dwells on that flight 
of Polixenes with Camillo which proves to him that his 
suspicions are just. Sick with universal mistrust, dis- 
believing everything except his own opinion, blind with 
passion and hatred, writhing under the belief that he is 
the object of universal ridicule, he speaks — 

How blest am I 
In my just censure, in my true opinion ! 
Alack, for lesser knowledge ! How accurs'd 
In being so blest ! There may be in the cup 
A spider steep'd, and one may drink, depart, 
And yet partake no venom, for his knowledge 
Is not infected ; but if one present 
The abhorr'd ingredient to his eye, make known 
How he hath drunk, he cracks his gorge, his sides, 
With violent hefts. I have drunk, and seen the spider. 
Camillo was his help in this, his pandar : 
There is a plot against my life, my crown ; 
All 's true that is mistrusted : that false villain 
Whom I employ'd was pre-employ'd by him : 
He has discover'd my design, and I 
Eemain a pinch'd thing ; yea, a very trick 
For them to play at will. 

A devastated soul ! Charged with these fierce emotions, 
he drags her son away from his wife, accuses her of 
adultery, and that with hideous brutality in gesture, and 
in the grossest words. Jealousy — and it is another of 
its marks — takes away even the sense of honour — honour, 
the last thing that leaves a fallen gentleman. In shaming 
his wife before the lords, he dishonours his name and 
rank. It is worth while — in pursuance of Coleridge's 
distinction between the jealousies of Othello and Leontes 1 
— to compare Leontes' consistent brutality and his firm 
belief in Hermione's guilt as growing out of a nature 

1 I have used in the text that most admirable note in which Cole- 
ridge compared the jealousy of Leontes and Othello. No one could help 
using it. 



262 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

to which jealousy is native, with the bursts of tender- 
ness which intrude into Othello's fierceness, and with 
his wavering belief in Desdemona's guilt as proceeding 
from a nature to which jealousy is not native. Leontes 
leaps from within himself into all the horrors of jealousy. 
Othello is slowly dragged into them from without. 

Hermione's conduct and speech under the storm are 
those of a woman as strong as Leontes is weak. At first 
it is blank astonishment : ' What is this ? sport ? ' This is 
followed by a grave indignation with the husband, couched 
in words of deep respect to the King — 

How will this grieve you 
When you shall come to clearer knowledge that 
You thus have publish'd me ! Gentle my lord, 
You scarce can right me throughly then to say 
You did mistake. 

There 's some ill planet reigns ; 
I must be patient till the heavens look 
With an aspect more favourable. Good my lord3, 
I am not prone to weeping, as our sex 
Commonly are ; the want of which vain dew 
Perchance shall dry your pities : but I have 
That honourable grief lodg'd here which burns 
Worse than tears drown : . . . 

. . . Adieu, my lord : 
I never wish'd to see you sorry ; now 
I trust I shall. 

Any man but one poisoned with jealousy, another 
characteristic of which is to make all things but itself 
seem false, would see that this woman was true, and that 
truth was her deepest desire. The noble expression of 
her guiltless sorrow convinces the lords of her innocence. 
But every word she says, so blinding is his passion, adds 
fuel to the fire in Leontes, as afterwards in the trial-scene; 
and, at last, he is left among his courtiers, utterly alone, 
and alone in his opinion, assuming on his own head the 
whole evidence of his wife's guilt. Shakespeare is careful 
to keep up this insane blindness of jealousy, even when 



WINTER'S TALE 263 

the gods, by the oracle, declare the innocence of Hermione. 
His passion denies the gods — 

There is no truth at all i' the oracle : 

The sessions shall proceed ; this is mere falsehood. 

The third scene in the second act is a revelation, 
not only of the fierce sleeplessness and incessant dis- 
quietude, but also of the cruelty, of jealousy. Hermione 
has been delivered in prison of a girl. Paulina brings 
the child to Leontes and calls on him to recognise it. 
But before she comes in, we look into the soul of Leontes, 
full of an awful restlessness, only to be hushed by blood. 
Nothing but the cruel death of those who have tortured 
him can quiet that. Polixenes is out of his power. Let 
Hermione and her brat be burnt alive. Then half his 
pain may pass. 

Nor night, nor day, no rest : it is but weakness 
To bear the matter thus ; mere weakness. If 
The cause were not in being,— part o' the cause, 
She the adultress ; for the harlot king 
Is quite beyond mine arm, out of the blank 
And level of my brain, plot-proof ; but she 
I can hook to me : say that she were gone, 
Given to the fire, a moiety of my rest 
Might come to me again. Who 's there ? 

All that follows is full of horror and pity. The dreadful 
imputation of his belief in his wife's unchastity to his 
little son who is really dying for love of his mother; 
his attack on Paulina's honesty of life, on the loyalty of 
his lords; his character, his very blood poisoned by his 
madness ; even the pitiable phrase, ' I am a feather for 
each wind that blows,' said because he saves the child 
from the fire only to expose it to the wild beasts — the 
slightest variation from the worst cruelty of the passion 
seeming to him the acme of changeableness — all reveal, 
with magnificent penetration and execution, the over- 
whelming way in which the vengefulness of jealousy has 



264 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

sucked everything in his world into itself, and yet is 
hungry still. 

Then the scene changes, and the third act opens with 
the bright air and peace of the description of Delphi. 

The climate 's delicate, the air most sweet, 
Fertile the isle, the temple much surpassing 
The common praise it hears. 

This happy, gentle picture relieves the mind, oppressed 
with the furies of the last act. Moreover, the description 
of the grave and reverent priests and sacrifice at Delphi 
prepares us by its solemn ceremony for the gravity of the 
Court of Trial, and the divine deliverance of the innocent 
Queen. 

Hermione's defence raises higher the solemn note. It 
is dignified as from a Queen, but even more dignified as 
from her innocence. It avows, with her own frank bold- 
ness, her loving friendship for Polixenes. It appeals to 
heaven ; nor does she doubt, as she looks straight at the 
King with indignant purity, 

but innocence shall make 
False accusation blush, and tyranny 
Tremble at patience. 

She appeals to the King himself and to her past life with 
him; her honour has always been unstained. It is a 
passing revelation of her quiet intellect, steady in the 
midst of danger, when she allows, as if it were an abstract 
question, the truth of her husband's remark, when he 
brutally answers her self-defence 

Leon. I ne'er heard yet 

That any of these bolder vices wanted 

Less impudence to gainsay -what they did 

Than to perform it first. 
Her. That 's true enough ; 

Though 'tis a saying, sir, not due to me. 

Nor is her half-contempt of her husband, who could be 
so swept into folly by the phantoms of his imagination, 



WINTER'S TALE 265 

less a revelation of her innocence, her good sense, her 

intellectual repose — 

You speak a language that I understand not : 
My life stands in the level of your dreams, 
Which I '11 lay down. 

Her acceptance of death is as splendid in form as it is 
quiet in speech. She loves life but not life dishonoured 
by Leontes ; she loves her honour that now she defends 
by a last appeal, 

I do refer me to the oracle : 

Apollo be my judge. 

The oracle is read; it speaks her innocence. Leontes, 
it declares, is a jealous tyrant; Polixenes blameless; 
Camillo a true subject. Then the last wave of the jealous 
fury breaks in foam against the very gods : ' There 's no 
truth at all in the oracle,' shouts Leontes. 

On this final insolence the servant comes in to tell that 
Mamillius is dead, and dead through ' mere conceit and 
fear of the Queen's speed.' This quick misfortune at last 
shocks Leontes out of his madness, and convinces him of 
the truth of the oracle. 

Apollo 's angry ; and the heavens themselves 
Do strike at my injustice. 

So desperately blind is jealousy, that only the gods them- 
selves and their oracle, backed up by the death of his son, 
can open the eyes of Leontes. Then his repentance is as 
swift as his evil, and that swiftness is in his character. 

Were the play to be a tragedy, it should have ended 
here with the death of Leontes. His heart should have 
broken. But this is to be a Winters Tale, and we pass to 
that which would be superfluous had it been a tragedy — 
the entrance of Paulina to pour out her indignation on 
Leontes, and to tell him that the Queen is dead. The 
scene is needed to bring out the deep penitence of the 
King, to prepare us for his future happiness — sixteen 



266 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

years away — and to make clear that his guilt is not rooted 
in his nature, but the result of a sudden storm of evil 
overwhelming a nature naturally noble. Paulina makes 
us feel this. She repents her rage as he repents. As she 
speaks peace to him, a hope steals in that all may not 
be so wrong as we think. Her wrath is the last effort of 
the storm. When she forgives, the storm dies down, and 
the scene ends in a strain of quiet sorrow. 

But during this hurricane of base passion what destruc- 
tion has been wrought ! Hermione is given for dead. 
Mamillius, the heir of the crown, is dead. Antigonus is 
in exile and is slain. The long friendship of the kings is 
broken. Camillo, Leontes' most trusty councillor, is gone. 
The new-born babe is exposed to the wild beasts. Leontes 
stands alone. The desert country near the sea, in which 
Perdita is cast away, is not more a desert than his life. 

The fate of only one element in the story remains 
uncertain — the fate of the new-born child whom Leontes 
has given to Antigonus to cast away. In this little seed 
is the redemption of the past hidden. What the guilt of 
jealousy's selfish love has wrought is to be undone by 
the unselfish love of Florizel and Perdita, of the son of 
Polixenes and the daughter of Hermione. 

The story of the child is told in the last scene of the 
third act. This scene, where the shepherds find the child 
and carry it home, links the first three acts (even after 
the lapse of sixteen years) to the fourth and fifth. The 
saved child is the girl of the fourth act. 

Not only in this is the art of the dramatist seen, but 
also in the continuance of the stormy atmosphere through 
which we have passed. It would not be in tune to 
introduce now the lovely peace of the fourth act; and 
the child, born in the tempest of passion, is cradled in 
the tempest of the elements. The ship which carried her 
is wrecked with all on board. Antigonus, who did the 



WINTER'S TALE 267 

wicked will of the King, is devoured by a wild beast, and 
Hermione (to knit this scene to w T hat has gone before) 
appears in a dream to Antigonus and prophesies his death. 

I never saw a vessel of like sorrow, 

So fill'd and so becoming : in pure white robes, 

Like very sanctity, she did approach 

My cabin where I lay ; 

Our eyes are filled with the image of the motherhood of 
the abandoned child. It is a touch of the finest art. 

Antigonus lays down the child on the earth : ' Blossom, 
speed thee well.' His cruel death is somewhat excused by 
his belief, even after his dream, in the guilt of Hermione, 
and by his crude obedience to the hateful command of the 
King to expose the child. The storm begins, the day 
darkens, the heavens are wroth with the cruelty of man. 
Antigonus flies from the savage clamour of the wild beast 
that devours him, and the shepherds come in to find the 
child. The scene ends with their rustic talk, full of 
quaint humour and peasant wisdom. Coarse and home- 
spun as the speeches are of the Shepherd and the Clown, 
yet the true humour in them redeems their coarseness. 
The only infamous coarseness is that which has no 
humour. Moreover, after the tornado of passion in which 
we have lived at the court, we are relieved to find our- 
selves in the honest life of the country, among clownish 
wits. As we listen to the rude talk of the shepherds, we 
presage the simple, peaceful, working, and festive life of 
the country folk, in the midst of which we shall, in the 
next act, find Perdita set like a pearl in a rough-grained 
shell. 

Time, the Chorus, now calls on us to pass over sixteen 
years, and the fourth act opens with a dialogue between 
Polixenes and Camillo. The dialogue, as it takes up one 
matter after another, shows and clears the way for the 
renewed action of the drama. We hear first of Camillo's 



268 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

longing to return to Sicilia, and this is afterwards used 
to supply means for the flight of the lovers; secondly, 
the suggestion is made of a reknitting of the broken 
friendship of the two kings, and we begin to expect 
the close; thirdly, the loves of Florizel and Perdita are 
discussed by Polixenes and Camillo who determine to 
visit in disguise the shepherd's farm on the feast-day. 
We know what will come of that. Polixenes will break 
up the unequal love-affair. 

The first conversation thus prepares us for all that 
follows. It is Shakespeare's way : ' Expectation, not sur- 
prise.' And our pleasure, as we listen, is in seeing how 
he will work out the matter, and what emotion he will 
charge it with, and convey to us. That also was the 
way of the great Greek dramatists. The Athenian 
audience knew beforehand all the events of the play. 
Their interest was not in the story, but in the manner 
it was presented. 

However, we do not get at once into the heart of the 
action, and of the lovers. Shakespeare prepares us for 
his idyll by a scene between Autolycus and the Clown, 
Perdita's supposed brother. The song of Autolycus strikes 
the keynote of the rustic life we are to enter, in which 
flowers and the singing of birds are dear to maids and 
lovers, in which rude wit makes holiday, and which is 
afterwards wrought into perfect melody by the exquisite 
tongue of Perdita, and by the play of tender mirth and 
romantic love between her and Florizel. Even to 
Autolycus there is pleasure in the daffodils that begin 
to peer when the sweet of the year comes in, though the 
tirra-lirra of the lark only minds him of ale and sport in 
the hayfield. But then he is a gay good-for-nothing who 
brings the cunning of the city into the simplicity of the 
country. When the Clown appears, the business of the 
feast appears ; and, with pleasant art, Perdita's open hand, 



WINTER'S TALE 269 

her happy extravagance in joy, and her love of lovely 
things, are sketched by her brother. 'What will this 
sister of mine do with so much rice. But my father 
hath made her mistress of the feast, and she lays it on. 
She hath made me four-and-twenty nosegays for the 
shearers.' This is a great artist's sketch. The finished 
picture is to come. 

I do not wish to interrupt the close, therefore I shall 
take here Autolycus and the Clown. Autolycus is the 
incarnate rogue. He has come down from Greek-land, 
but he is English also, and Elizabethan. He lives on the 
simplicity of the world, and thinks he is right in that. 
The world, he thinks, exists for rogues. And indeed, he is 
so frank of his roguery, and enjoys it so heartily, that it is 
easy not to be angry with him. We begin to think that 
he and his fellow-sinners are of use in the world. Indeed, 
if there were none like him, dull people might never 
become intelligent. 

But the best excuse for him, and his excellent use, is his 
gaiety. Nothing interferes with that, nothing darkens it. 
He has been degraded from the court for dishonesty ; he 
is a piece of a coward ; he is, now and then, for practice of 
his art, something of a sneak, but he is as gay as a cuckoo 
who has been a fraud from the beginning. And the world 
is so stupid, that it is thankful for the rogue, provided 
he makes it mirth ; so uninventive, that it likes the im- 
aginative liar ; so lazy, that the hustling of the rogues is 
excellent for its activity. Nothing can be better done 
than his fooling and robbing of the Clown, especially if we 
read what is said with our eyes on the stage. All he 
says supplies by-play for the actor. 

While he is stealing in this scene, we are conscious, 
with delight, that Autolycus is playing with his own wit, 
and rejoicing that he is cheating so admirably. When 
the Clown is gone, he breaks out into self-gratulation. 



270 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

I'll be with you at your sheep-shearing too. If I make not this cheat 
bring out another, and the shearers prove sheep, let me be unrolled, and 
my name put in the book of virtue. 

He has entered on the scene, singing ; and the song shows 
he is not without some enjoyment of nature. Shakespeare 
knew that if a man be naturally merry, and has good 
health, and also the want of conscience which, in slight 
natures, so often accompanies good health, roguery does 
not prevent him from having pleasure in sweet air and 
the songs of birds, from feeling the charm of the spring 
dancing in his blood, from having a vague happiness 
in the beautiful world. Indeed, Nature herself, having no 
conscience, unmorality, like that of the Greek nymphs 
and fauns, is in good tune with her. It is preoccupation 
with ourselves, not wrong-doing, which prevents us from 
enjoying her. Hear how Autolycus finishes the scene — 

' Jog on, jog on, the footpath way, 

And merrily hent the stile-a ; 
A merry heart goes all the day, 
Your sad tires in a mile-a.' 

Yet Shakespeare felt that he must say something about 
conscience, give us some hint how it happens that Auto- 
lycus is happy, and yet such a rascal. And one pregnant 
touch explains it. ' Beating and hanging are terrors for 
me ; for the life to come, I sleep out the thought of it.' 
Coleridge objects to that; I think it hits the very white of 
the matter. Moreover, Autolycus, if a whiff of conscience 
troubles him, gets rid of the trouble of it, as many of 
us do, by confession of his roguery to himself — priest 
and penitent in one — by absolving himself, after he has 
blamed himself. The moral burden is lifted off when he 
describes himself, to the Clown, by name, as a rascal, 
whipped out of the court for his vices, and settled into 
roguery. 

It is not only bodily health, but intellectual quickness 



WINTER'S TALE 271 

that makes his life happy. There is not one touch of 
noble thought or delicate feeling from end to end of 
Autolycus. He is strictly kept within his low, monkey- 
inspired range ; but within that he is clever, imaginative 
when he is lying, and always ravished with his own 
tricksy intelligence. His quickness gives as much plea- 
sure to the world as to himself. When the servant comes 
to report his arrival at the feast, we see how he has 
ravished the simple rustics. 

master ! if you did but hear the pedlar at the door, you would 
never dance again after a tabor and pipe ; no, the bagpipe could not 
move you. He sings several tunes faster than you '11 tell money ; he 
utters them as he had eaten ballads and all men's ears grew to his 
tunes. 

Why, he sings over his lawns and ribbons as they were gods and 
goddesses. You would think a smock were a she-angel, he so chants to 
the sleeve-hand, and the work about the square on 't. 

When he is among them, he boldly risks their unbelief 
with marvels of lying, preferring the fun of his rogue- 
imagination to even the money he wins by it. He is 
the life and soul of all the homely foolery of the feast ; 
and though he robs everybody, he makes everybody 
happy. 

But afterwards, when, dressed in Florizel's clothes, he 
passes himself off as a courtier to the Clown and Shepherd, 
he is a rogue out of his element, and both seem to detect 
something out of place in him. ' This cannot be but a 
great courtier,' says the Clown, a vague doubt in his mind. 
The Shepherd, being older, is not so credulous. 'His 
garments are rich, but he wears them not handsomely.' 
Shakespeare knew how keen the English rustic was, and 
he marks it in this single phrase. But Autolycus, by 
terrible lying, gets the better of them ; and yet is the 
cause of the secret of the play being discovered. He is, 
though he is no less a rogue, of this use, at least, in 
the play. 



272 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

Lastly, his self-delight in his roguery raises it almost 
into the dignity of a profession. He is Hermes, fallen 
from his high estate, into evil times, and modern ways. 
When he has sold all his pedlar's pack, and robbed most 
of the purses at the sheep-shearing, his success proves to 
him that honesty is ridiculous. ' Ha, ha 1 what a fool 
Honesty is ! And Trust, his sworn brother, a very simple 
gentleman ! ' Then, afterwards, when he is drawn in to 
help the Prince and Perdita, and sees, in revealing their 
secret, new ways of getting fortune open, he cries that 
the very gods have been changed by his cleverness to his 
side, that Fortune has made the time lucky for thieves. 

I see this is the time that the unjust man doth thrive. Sure, the gods 
do this year connive at us, and we may do anything extempore. ... If 
I had a mind to be honest, I see Fortune would not suffer me : she drops 
booties in my mouth. 

Set over against this flashing bit of roguery is the dull, 
honest, good-natured Clown, who believes in every one; 
who, the moment he is turned into a courtier, believes 
he is at all points a fine gentleman; and lords it over 
Autolycus in a fashion which, because he is good and 
honest, has indeed some touches of the gentleman. 
When we first meet him, in the fourth act, a single 
phrase marks the uneducated clown. He is casting up 
the expenses of the feast. ' I cannot do it,' he says, ' with- 
out counters.' Another phrase, when he is in his new 
estate — as Perdita's supposed brother — places his whole 
mind before us. ' Hark ! the Kings and the Princes, our 
kindred, are going to see the Queen's picture.' 

And now in the fourth act, we hear the story of the 
love of Perdita and Florizel. No scene in these dramas 
is more delicate in imagination, sweeter with youthful 
love. We breathe the old idyllic air, scented with the 
breath of flowers. All our country sights and sounds 
are there, and the dew that drenches them is the dew 



WINTER'S TALE 273 

of young passion, pure, ardent ; and its tenderness is gay. 
We walk on the grass ; trie garden is near at hand that 
Perdita has tended; the tents and tables are set out in 
the open air, the brightness of May is over the feast ; and 
there, at last, is Perdita amidst the flowers, herself a flower 
of grace, weaving in her hands the garland which is to 
become a crown. The rustic dance and fun, the songs 
and chaff of the men mingle with the hospitable, homely 
courtesy of the Shepherd, with the singing of Autolycus. 
The pastoral life of Stratford is before us, the feast in the 
meadows where the sheep are wandering. Shakespeare, 
we feel, is happy in it. 

In the midst are Florizel and Perdita, like two rose- 
trees in a garden of herbs. They are high-born, and 
they become their rank. Shakespeare, in an age when 
high-birth honoured itself, makes their birth shine in 
their words and ways. Florizel is known by Camillo and 
Polixenes, who are now present in disguise, for what he is ; 
but Perdita is not known, save as a girl who has always lived 
among the shepherds. Shakespeare keeps her princess at 
every point but pride. To Florizel, as he looks at her, the 
sheep-shearing is as a meeting of the petty gods, and she 
the Queen of it. Polixenes, though angry with her, can- 
not resist her charm. He calls her ' enchantment,' and 
sees in her more than she seems — 

This is the prettiest low-born lass that ever 
Ran on the green sward ; nothing she does or seems 
But smacks of something greater than herself ; 
Too noble for this place. 

Her talk belongs to her native nobleness. She has, 
like the shepherdesses of Sidney's pastoral, drunk from 
the classic spring, and this little learning is exalted into 
poetic beauty by her gracious character, her imagination 
of beauty, and by the uplifting impulse of her love. All 
the world knows how exquisite, how creative is her 



274 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

speech as she comes to meet her guests, half-buried in 
her flowers : 

Proserpina ! 

For the flowers now that frighted thou let'st fall 

From Dis's wagon ! daffodils, 

That come before the swallow dares, and take 

The winds of March with beauty ; violets dim, 

But sweeter than the lids of Juno's eyes 

Or Cytherea's breath ; pale prime-roses, 

That die unmarried, ere they can behold 

Bright Phoebus in his strength, a malady 

Most incident to maids ; bold oxlips and 

The crown imperial ; lilies of all kinds, 

The flower-de-luce being one. ! these I lack, 

To make you garlands of, and my sweet friend, 

To strew him o'er and o'er ! 

Added to this poetic beauty is the grace of native intel- 
lect. She holds her own with Polixenes when he discusses 
the mutual relation of nature and art. Her sight of the 
knot of a difficulty is always clear, and so is her solution 
of it. This is the mother's intellect in the child. Then, 
her love for Florizel is confessed as simply, with as little 
care for what others think of her, as her mother confessed 
her friendship with Polixenes. In this handing down of 
similarity of character, Shakespeare is perhaps scienti- 
fically and certainly poetically right ; and he supports 
this idea of his throughout the rest of the play. Perdita, 
with a difference, descends from her mother. 

The noble frankness in her confession of love when 
Florizel asks, if she will strew flowers over him, as over a 
corse, is divinely beautiful. 

Flor. What ! like a corse ? 

Per. No, like a bank for love to lie and play on ; 

Not like a corse ; or if, — not to be buried, 

But quick and in mine arms. 

When Florizel answers, his love lifts him to her level, 
and he speaks the finest praise of a maiden ever 
spoken ; 



WINTER'S TALE 275 

What you do 
Still betters what is done. When you speak, sweet, 
I 'd have you do it ever : when you sing, 
I 'd have you buy and sell so ; so give alms ; 
Pray so ; and, for the ordering your affairs, 
To sing them too : when you do dance, I wish you 
A wave o' the sea, that you might ever do 
Nothing but that ; move still, still so, 
And own no other function : each your doing, 
So singular in each particular, 
Crowns what you are doing in the present deed, 
That all your acts are queens. 

Even the old Shepherd, when he tells of their affection, 

is so moved by its beauty that he slides into poetry. Had 

the Shepherd been too home-spun then in speech, he 

would have lowered the note of the scene. Yet what 

he says is not pitched too high ; 

He says he loves my daughter ; 
I think so too : for never gaz'd the moon 
Upon the water as he'll stand and read 
As 'twere my daughter's eyes ; and, to be plain, 
I think there is not half a kiss to choose 
Who loves the other best. 

Nor is it less in Shakespeare's manner of expressing 
love in early youth — such love as speaks in Romeo — that 
Florizel, towards the close of the scene, breaks into 
an extravagance of words, exhausts himself in a rush of 
metaphors, in the vain attempt to paint his inexpressible 

love: 

! hear me breathe my life 
Before this ancient sir, who, it should seem, 
Hath sometime lov'd : I take thy hand ; this hand, 
As soft as dove's down and as white as it, 
Or Ethiopian's tooth, or the fann'd snow 
That 's bolted by the northern blasts twice o'er. 

Be witness to 't, you and he and more than he, and men, 

the earth, the heavens, and all ; 
That, were I crown'd the most imperial monarch, 
Thereof most worthy, were I the fairest youth 
That ever made eye swerve, had force and knowledge 



276 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

More than was ever man's, I would not prize them 
Without her love ; for her employ them all ; 
Commend them and condemn them to her service 
Or to their own perdition. 

To this outburst what an answer is Perdita's ? She is 

all but silent, for Florizel has said so much ; but her little 

phrase is as passionate as his words, and broken at every 

pause with emotion — 

I cannot speak 
So well, nothing so well ; no, nor mean better : 
By the pattern of mine own thoughts I cut out 
The purity of his. 

The one touch where Florizel carries too far this love of 
his, so as to be lower in right feeling than he ought to be, 
is where he is made in presence of his father to speak 
of his father's death. ' One being dead,' he says, ' I shall 
have more than you can dream of yet.' It is true, this 
accounts for the violence of his father's anger. On hear- 
ing it, Polixenes, after an attempt to control himself by 
reasoning with Florizel, breaks out into such a fury with 
every one that it almost seems as if Shakespeare, having 
represented in Leontes jealousy overwhelming reason, in- 
tended in Polixenes here to represent a swift storm of 
anger in which all reasonableness is destroyed. 

At any rate, this is the central point of the action of 
the second part of the play. It shatters all the air-built 
castles of the young lovers. Perdita and Florizel take 
the blow differently, but each in character. Perdita is, 
as Coleridge said, more than exquisite in her way. Her 
good-breeding comes forth, under these circumstances, as 
love's democratic feeling. The sun looks on the cottage, she 
says, as brightly as on the court. Her love lifts her above 
all fear. She sweeps through change after change of feel- 
ing and temper, being a little confused by the shock. A 
momentary touch of contending sorrow and love makes 
her turn to Florizel — 'WiU't please you, sir, be gone?' 



WINTER'S TALE 277 

Then quickly she breaks down into grief, into a memory 
of her presentiments in the past, into a half-reproach to 
Florizel, into a half-ironical self-pity and self-scorn that 
she should have given herself up to this foolish hope for 

happy love. 

Even here undone ! 
I was not much afeard ; for once or twice 
I was ahout to speak and tell him plainly, 
The self same sun that shines upon his court 
Hides not his visage from our cottage, but 
Looks on alike. Will 't please yon, sir, be gone ? 
I told you what would come of this : beseech you, 
Of youx own state take care : this dream of mine — 
Being now awake, I '11 queen it no inch farther, 
But milk my ewes and weep. 

But Florizel is equal to the moment. His love over- 
masters his father's anger, his hope of the throne, im- 
prisonment, poverty, death itself. He resolves on, and 
plans, his flight with Perdita. The world is well lost for 

his love — 

Why look you so upon me ? 
I am but sorry, not afeard ; delay'd, 
But nothing alter'd. What I was, I am. 

There is a parallel in this firm intensity of love to 
the madness of Leontes in the first act. In the case of 
Leontes a bad passion hurries him into a world of death. 
In the case of Florizel a good passion hurries him 
into a world of life. Both passions are represented as 
reaching a height in which reason is in abeyance; and 
though I do not say that Shakespeare, of set purpose, 
contrasted here a noble and an ignoble passion when 
they were both in flood ; yet he does, in the rush of his 
genius, make it clear that the being carried away by a 
noble passion is as right as being carried away by a base 
passion is wrong. 

Leontes sacrifices everything to his jealousy, and ruins 
his own life and the lives of others. Florizel sacrifices 



278 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

everything to his pure love, and the resolve produces 
the circumstances which restore all that the jealousy of 
Leontes has ruined. The common world would say that 
Florizel's conduct was madness. He himself believes his 
folly better reason than the world's judgment. When 
Perdita says, she knew her dignity would last but till 
'twere known, he answers with the charming extrava- 
gance of young love 

It cannot fail but by 
The violation of my faith ; and then 
Let nature crush the sides o' the earth together 
And mar the seeds within ! Lift up thy looks 
From my succession wipe me, father ; I 
Am heir to my affection. 

Be advis'd,' says Camillo ; 

Flor. I am ; and by my fancy : if my reason 

Will thereto be obedient, I have reason ; 

If not, my senses, better pleas'd with madness, 

Do bid it welcome. 
Cam. This is desperate, sir ! 

Just what every one thought of Leontes; but how 
different ! Again, I drew attention to that phrase of 
Leontes, ' I am a feather for each wind that blows,' in 
which, because he modified the burning of the babe to 
exposure in a desert, he seemed to himself, so fierce was 
the single-eyed demand of his tyrant passion, to be as 
inconstant as a feather in a veering wind. So Florizel 
here, over-mastered by his deep feeling, thinks, when 
Camillo induces him to make a slight alteration in his 
first plan of flight, that he is the very slave of chance. He 
is really moving like an arrow to his point, shot from the 
strained bow of his will, yet he says 

We profess 
Ourselves to be the slaves of chance and liies 
Of every wind that blows. 



WINTER'S TALE 279 

In this resemblance of his metaphor to that of Leontes is 
the unconscious art of genius, and it confirms the parallel 
I have drawn. 

And now, how, in this sudden crisis, does Perdita appear ? 
As Hermione would have done in girlhood ! I have already 
marked some touches of this descent of character. There 
are others of the same kind. When she refuses, in the 
sheep-shearing scene, to plant streaked gillyvors in her 
garden, because ' there is an art which in their piedness 
shares with great creating Nature,' she thinks, like 
Hermione, that to slip from the natural is to slip from 
truth. But when Polixenes proves that the art itself is 
nature, then, just as Hermione in the trial scene acknow- 
ledged as an abstract truth a rough remark of Leontes — 
' That 's true enough, though 'tis a saying, sir, not due to 
me' ; so here, Perdita's intellect, thinking of the argument, 
answers, ' So it is.' But for all that, her instinctive love 
of Nature's freedom to follow her own ways will have 
nothing to do with that which her reason allows. Polix- 
enes thinks he has won her over, because she confesses 
the weight of his argument — 

Polix. Then make your garden rich in gillyvors. 

'I'll not put,' answers Perdita with a flash, 'the dibble 
in the earth to set one slip of them.' When Hermione 
was young, she would have said the same, and with the 
same impetuosity. 

Her passionate love, her soft tenderness do not affect 
her intellect. Like Hermione, she is quite clear-eyed; 
keen to divide the true from the false; quiet, through 
good sense, in hours of confused trouble. In the midst 
of the hurry of flight and of changing plans, Perdita, like 
her mother — whose intellect, even in the deepest grief, 
is always detached to meet with coolness the point at 



280 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

issue — can stay to correct a view of life put forward by 
Camillo, who says — 

Besides, you know 
Prosperity 's the very bond of love, 
Whose fresh complexion and whose heart together 
Affliction alters. 

Perdita sifts the true in it from the untrue, and answers 
with a noble respect for the soul, resting on whose powers 
she makes her judgment ; 

One of these is true ; 
I think affliction may subdue the cheek, 
But not take in the mind. 

'Yea, say you so?' replies Camillo, astonished at this 
quiet, winnowing intelligence in a girl, now overwhelmed 
with trouble ; 

There shall not at your father's house these seven years 
Be born another such. 

And finally, when all is ready, Camillo and Florizel 
both excited to depart, Perdita is quiet. She has made 
up her mind as well as her heart. She sees that there 
is no other way for her, and takes it, undelaying, 

I see the play so lies 
That I must bear a part. 

So they fly away, and the fifth act opens in Leontes' 
palace. Sixteen years have gone by since we last saw him, 
years of sorrow ; and his repentance has kept him true to 
his wife's memory. He loves her for herself, but more for 
that he had wronged her. She has concealed herself from 
him, hoping for the finding of her child, all these years. 
It seems too severe a punishment for Leontes, accom- 
panied, as it was, by Paulina's bitter tongue. One might 
even call Hermione hard-hearted, but Shakespeare does 
not always think that swift forgiveness is one of the 
remarkable qualities of women. 

Leontes has not yet forgiven himself. And his lords 



WINTER'S TALE 281 

urge him to put aside his penitence and give the State 

an heir. 

Do as the heavens have done, forget your evil ; 
With them forgive yourself. 

Leontes listens, but his heart is with the past. It is well : 

he is thus ready for the resurrection of his wife. Nay, 

there is passion still in his love. Paulina, in her rough 

way, thinking that he may yield to his counsellors, says 

that he ' killed his wife.' His old, swiftly moved nature 

breaks out, yet with a new gentleness. 

Kill'd! 
She I kill'd ! I did so ; but thou strik'st me 
Sorely to say I did : it is as bitter 
Upon thy tongue as in my thought. Now, good row, 
Say so but seldom. 

That might only be the voice of penitence, even of 
remorse; and Shakespeare does not think that Leontes 
would be worthy of the recovery of his wife, or that it 
would be fitting they should again come together, were 
there no intensity of love in Leontes' soul. There- 
fore when his lords beseech him to marry, and Paulina, 
objecting, paints how he would feel with another woman, 
if his wife's eyes, passing ghostlike before him, should 
say, ' Remember mine ' ; Leontes' deep-seated and yearning 
passion leaps to the surface ; 

Stars, stars ! 

And all eyes else dead coals. Fear thou no wife ; 

I '11 have no wife, Paulina. 

And Paulina, satisfied, hints at a coming happiness in 
Shakespeare's preparing way. 

At this point Florizel and Perdita enter with Camillo, 
bearing in their hands the full horn of the future, the 
full redemption of the past. Perdita is preceded by the 
ravishment she creates among the court ; ' the most peer- 
less piece of earth that e'er the sun shone bright on.' 
Spring comes with her into the midst of grey autumn, 



282 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

love and rapture into the midst of weary sorrow. Leontes 
cannot turn his eyes from her; the father is drawn by 
nature to the child whom he knows not. 

Then comes the revelation of Perdita's true birth. 
All the characters are brought together. Polixenes has 
pursued his flying son. The shepherds bring the bundle 
which contains the proofs of the child's descent. The 
broken friendship of the kings is again knit together. 
And the lovers, following true love, have done it. Only 
Hermione is not yet here ; and Paulina brings the crowd 
to see her statue. The last scene is in the chapel, when 
the statue comes to life. It is with exquisite art that, 
seeing the image of her mother, Perdita is now touched. 
She cannot speak, but Leontes describes her, while he 
addresses the statue ; 

0, royal piece ! 

There's magic in thy majesty, which has 

My evils conjur'd to remembrance, and 

From thy admiring daughter took the spirits, 

Standing like stone with thee. 

But Perdita recovers, kneels, and speaks 

And give me leave, 
And do not say 'tis superstition 

— how lovely is the common- sense of this, a touch which 
recalls her mother's intelligence — 

that 
I kneel and then implore her blessing. Lady, 
Dear queen, that ended when I but began, 
Give me that hand of yours to kiss. 

But the main interest is the meeting of Leontes and 
Hermione, whom long ago evil passion parted. Leontes' 
character, in its good, is carefully maintained. The im- 
petuous cries and action, the feeling so strong in him that it 
breaks its utterance, the rush ot successive emotions, so 
that they trip up one another, are the same in him 
as before. Hermione is also unchanged; stately, quiet, 



WINTER'S TALE 283 

yet impassioned. She hangs in silence on Leontes' neck. 
She only speaks when she turns to her daughter, for 
motherhood, we remember, was always deep in her ; 

Paul. Turn, good lady ; 

Our Perdita is found. 

Her. You gods, look down, 

And from your sacred vials pour your graces 
Upon my daughter's head ! Tell me, mine own, 
"Where hast thou been preserv'd ? where liv'd 1 how found 
Thy father's court ? 

And in the phrase 'thy father's court' is contained the 
pardon of Leontes. So all is at an end. The gods have 
let evil die, and good live to cure its pain. The music, 
that bids Hermione be stone no more, plays now the 
sweet melodies of a new life. Nor is the calm of the 
close, with its soft tune, out of harmony with the storm 
of the beginning. The one has grown out of the other. 
Jealousy divides, love unites — this is the only moral we 
accept from A Winter's Tale. 



THE TEMPEST 

The Tempest was one of the last, if not the last as some 
think, of Shakespeare's dramas — of those, that is, entirely 
written by himself. Even this is doubted, and the Mask 
which Prospero shows to the lovers has sometimes been 
allotted to another hand. The Epilogue is, of course, 
rejected. By the time of James I. the Masque had become 
an important affair, with elaborate scenery, dresses, 
dances, and machinery, and it is possible (to afford time 
for the representation of the Mask in this play) that the 
original play was abridged by the actors, or that Shake- 
speare deliberately made it brief. It is, save the Comedy 
of Errors, the shortest of his comedies. Its source, if it 
had one in a previous drama or a tale, has not been dis- 
covered. Earnest searchers have found the origin of one 
passage in Florio's translation of Montaigne, and some 
suggestions for Prospero's invocation 

Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves. 

in Ovid, but these are futile discoveries. The name of 
Setebos, other names, and some details, were possibly 
borrowed from Eden's History of Travayle, 1577 ; and a 
book — The Discovery of the Bermudas, otherwise called 
the lie of Divels — may have suggested to him his island 
in the undiscovered seas, but Shakespeare needed no 
suggestion of this kind from books. His books were 
the people he met. It stands to reason that he had 
many talks with the captains and sailors who adventured 



THE TEMPEST 285 

their lives and fortunes in the Atlantic and Pacific, and 
who brought back to England wonderful tales of remote 
islands dwelt in by monsters and fit for a poet's imagi- 
nation to play with; fit to shape into beauty for the 
cultured folk, into sea-interest for the ' groundlings.' 

The play opens on a ship at sea, in a roaring storm, 
and amid the shouting of the sailors. I can well imagine 
how the rude sailors who had worked through the gales of 
the Spanish main, and who now stood in the pit to listen, 
cheered and laughed as they heard the boatswain hurry 
the mariners to their work, and send the passengers, 
including the King, to their cabins — 'What care these 
roarers for the name of king ? To cabin ; silence ! trouble 
us not ! ' In the great tempests of life all men find 
their place. 

As to the island, it ought, of course, to be in the Mediter- 
ranean, and commentators have wasted a great deal of 
time in conjecturing whether it was Malta, Lampedusa, 
Pantalaria, or Corcyra. It is in the Sea of the Imagina- 
tion ; and its rocks and dells, its nooks where the wave 
lies calm, nay, Prospero, Miranda, Caliban and Ariel, be- 
long to that country which is seen only by the intel- 
lectual eye, which is bodied forth from things unknown, 
but which abides for ever as it was first created, unsubject 
to the decay that winds and waters, frosts and fire work 
on the islands of the earth. This island is immortal, 
though no ship has cast anchor there ; 

It is an isle 'twixt Heaven, Air, Earth, and Sea, 
Cradled, and hung in clear tranquillity. 

When Prospero and Miranda left it for Milan, and Ariel 
flitted from it to the freedom of the elements, it was 
seen no more, save by the high spirit of imagination 
who has eyes within. And Shakespeare made its 
scenery quite clear, set in his allusive way; here and 



286 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

there touching in, throughout the play, its landscape 
to form a background for his human story. The sea 
breaks in foam on the strong-based promontories which 
jut out on either side of the bays where the 'yellow 
sands' curve inwards, on which Ariel and the sea- 
nymphs dance. Within the cliffs that overhang, like 
eyebrows over deep-set eyes, the incoming tides, are 
deep nooks of calm water into one of which Ariel brings 
the King's ship, and out of whose profound stillness 
Prospero called Ariel at night to fetch dew from the ' still- 
vexed Bermoothes.' Fresh brooks run down to the sea 
among the knotty pines and mossy oaks which fledge the 
ridges of the hills. In the scattered groves the grass is 
lush and lusty, and green, fed by frequent freshes ; but 
outside, beyond the wood of limes near Prospero's cell, 
where the land is somewhat tilled, there are wide spaces 
of forest land, full of sharp furzes, pricking gorse and 
thorns, unwholesome fens and standing pools ; and further 
still, in another part of the isle, desert and uninhabitable 
land. Since Prospero landed, goblins, and all the tribes 
of the elves, brought thither by his art, dwell in these 
wild places. The wolf and the bear live among their 
rocks, and for many years these frightened beasts heard 
the cries of Ariel penned in a cloven pine. This is the 
scenery of the play, and it is the scenery of elfin-land. * 

Prospero is, beyond his humanity, half a supernatural 
power, the god of the island ; the last image, and the most 
beautiful, of those mediseval enchanters who, like Vergil 
and Merlin, bowed to their will the powers of nature. 
Under his magic spell (which equally controls the 
souls of men and the elemental spirits) the natural 
and the supernatural mingle with a perfect ease of inter- 
change, only possible to consummate genius. There is 
no shock when we pass from the conversation of Pros- 
pero and Miranda to the conversation of Prospero and 



THE TEMPEST 287 

Ariel. Ariel seems as natural and true a character as 
Ferdinand ; Caliban is accepted as easily as Stephano. We 
are quite as ready to believe the music in the air, and 
the harpies who set out and carry away the tables in the 
wood, and the hounds that hunt Trinculo, Stephano, and 
Caliban, as we are to see Ferdinand changing eyes with 
Miranda, or Antonio and Sebastian drawing their swords 
to slay Alonzo. The magic mist broods over the whole 
play, and touches every character; the island makes its 
own subtle atmosphere. Prospero himself seems to feel 
that. When Gonzalo and the rest, at the end, are too 
confused to realise where they are, he bids them wait 
a little and recover : 

You do yet taste 

Some subtilties o' the isle that will not let you 

Believe things certain ; 

and Gonzalo expresses the same thought: We all have 
found ourselves, 

when no man was his own. 

No one is free from this magic in the air but Ferdinand 
and Miranda. True, their ' changing eyes ' at first sight 
is attributed by Prospero to the influence of Ariel, but 
that was an old man's mistake. There was no necessity 
for Ariel's help or interference. Love has its own magic, 
of a more potent spell than any in the book of Prospero. 
These lovers made their own enchantments, and earn, as 
Shakespeare wishes us to feel, the wonder of Prospero. 
The sweet encounter of their souls left far behind his 
wizardry. Even the life of Ariel, fine spirit as he was, 
was not so fine as theirs. No lover's talk in Shake- 
speare's dramas is more beautiful than theirs in the 
third act, where the innocent love of Miranda, who has 
never seen a man but her father, is in contrast with 
that of Ferdinand, who has seen many women and 
flitted through momentary love of them; but who, on 



288 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

touching Miranda, is lifted out of his atmosphere of 
light love, his half-cynical view of women, on to the level 
of her frank and innocent passion, such as Eve might 
have felt when first she looked into Adam's eyes. She 
would free him from his log-bearing service, herself 
would carry the wood ; but the Prince accepts a toil which, 
under her pitiful eyes, is glorified by love into a delight. 
And his ravishment is answered by her pure, tender, and 
childlike admiration and passion, confessing that he is 
all she desires, all she can conceive of beauty, princeli- 
ness, and joy. It is the modest, natural meeting in ardent 
love of sex and sex, tempered by their duty to honour, 
morality, and the high traditions of their birth. 

We may well observe the exquisite temperance of Shake- 
speare in all these scenes where Ferdinand and Miranda 
meet. The delicacy of fine character is not once over- 
stepped in a situation which, in the hands of a poet 
of less reverence for human nature, might have afforded 
room for sensational language or coarse innuendo. When 
Dryden took the subject he vilified it with high-flown 
talk and vile immodesty. But when Miranda first sees 
Ferdinand her surprise is absolutely natural and so is her 

language : 

What is't? A spirit ? 
Lord, how it looks about ! Believe me, sir, 
It carries a brave form : — but, 'tis a spirit. 

I might call him 
A thing divine ; for nothing natural 
I ever saw so noble. 

And when Prospero calls Ferdinand spy and traitor, she 
replies, and with equal grace of feeling, intelligence, 
intuition, and imagination ; 

There 's nothing ill can dwell in such a temple : 
If the ill spirit have so fair a house, 
Good things will strive to dwell with 't. 

Temperate boldness, modest frankness, innocent admira- 



THE TEMPEST 289 

tion ! Ferdinand speaks with less naturalness, but with 
the same temperance of words. It would have been a 
gross mistake in art if, after the loss of all his shipmates 
and while he believed his father drowned, he had broken 
into those hyperboles of love in which Romeo or Florizel 
indulged. Ferdinand is quiet ; his passion moves through 
sorrow's clouds. This modesty of language here is the 
result of one of those intuitive judgments of the fitting 
which make the characters in Shakespeare's work like the 
work of nature herself. And the intuitive judgment is 
itself a child of high imagination. 

Were he not certain of his power to keep this golden 
measure, he would not have assumed so difficult a task 
as the representation of Miranda — a girl ready to love 
but not knowing it even through the experience of others ; 
ignorant of what men were, save of her father ; surprised 
in a moment into the passion of love and in wonder 
with it ! 

Will the artist keep her natural ? Will she be womanly 
without lowering the type of fine womanhood? Will 
she also represent, in all her ways, the logical result 
of the circumstances which precede her meeting with 
Ferdinand ? Will everything be taken into account, not 
by the laboured analysis of the artist, but by his pene- 
trating imagination ? 

An affirmative answers all these questions. The deli- 
cacy of Shakespeare's touch bears him with divine ease 
through this maze of difficulty. Miranda is at all points 
in harmony with herself and her situation. She is a 
princess in manner, yet has never known the court; 
she is ignorant of life, yet well educated by a scholar; 
she lives in a preternatural air, yet belongs heart and 
soul to common humanity ; she loves with a complete 
self-surrender, yet guards her modesty, the reserve of her 
sex, and her moral dignity. 

T 



290 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

Prospero protects her, lest she should lose her natural 
womanhood in any way, from contact with his magic. 
She knows that he has power over the elements, but this 
does not influence her soul. She is as natural as if she 
had never touched the supernatural. Ariel, we observe, is 
never brought into contact with her. She does not seem 
to know of his existence. Caliban is natural to her ; not a 
monster, but a base type of man whom she does not love 
to look upon ; and her knowledge of him alone as human 
outside of her father makes her naive surprise at seeing 
Ferdinand all the more natural. 'Is it a spirit?' she 
cries. 

We meet her first on the shore after the tempest, which, 
Coleridge says, 'prepares and initiates the excitement 
required for the entire piece.' She has seen the ship- 
wreck, and her pity and tenderness for the poor souls 
open her heart to us : 

! I have suffer'd 
With those that I saw suffer : a brave vessel, 
Who had, no doubt, some noble creatures in her, 
Dash'd all to pieces. O ! the cry did knock 
Against my very heart ! Poor souls, they perish'd. 
Had I been any god of power, I would 
Have sunk the sea within the earth, or e'er 
It should the good ship so have swallow'd, and 
The fraughting souls within her. 

A most delightful outbreak of girlish ignorance and logic : 

she would overturn the earth and sea and all the world 

to save a few whom she saw die. 

This quick sympathy, this charming self-forgetfulness, 

keeps her free from any introspection, and gives the girl 

the attractiveness of childhood. All her life, as yet, is in 

love of her father. When he tells her the tale of his exile 

with her, her chief interest is in the thought of the trouble 

she must have given him — 

! my heart bleeds 
To think o' th' teen that I have turn'd you to, 



THE TEMPEST 291 

Which is from my remembrance. . . . 

Alack ! what trouble 
"Was I then to you ! 

To such an unself- conscious, outward-going nature, the 
great emotions of life come swiftly. When she hears of 
Gonzalo's kindness to her father gratitude flies, swift as a 
swallow, from her heart ; 

Would I might 
But ever see that man ! 

When Ferdinand appears Love becomes her master in 

a moment; and the charming openness with which it 

becomes apparent, while yet unconfessed, shows how it 

has filled her life immediately from end to end. She 

does not believe, when her father accuses Ferdinand and 

is harsh to him, that ill can dwell in so fair a house. 

' 1 11 be his surety,' she declares. Under the sway of her 

swift love she sets herself, even in this first interview, 

against her father's opinion. There is that in her heart 

now which is stronger than filial duty, which emancipates 

her from the dominance of the ancient ties. But this 

difference with Prospero is so sweetly spoken, so delicate 

of disposition, so reverential yet so pressing, that she 

loses nothing of the daughter in the lover. Even when 

she comforts Ferdinand for her father's hardness she 

defends her father ; 

Be of comfort ; 
My father 's of a better nature, sir, 
Than he appears by speech : this is unwonted, 
Which now came from him. 

Miranda has no self-introspection in this scene, but that 
comes, momentarily, with the fulness of love. In that 
most charming and delicate of love-conversings, when she 
and Ferdinand meet before Prospero's cell, and he is 
carrying the logs in enforced service, she looks into 
herself for the first time and realises her separate life. 
Shakespeare just touches this. After she has professed 



292 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

her love, she turns in upon herself. ' Wherefore iveep 
you ? ' says Ferdinand. 

At mine unworthiness, that dare not offer 
What I desire to give : and much less take 
What I shall die to want. 

But no sooner has she looked into her own heart, than 
she turns from its inspection to the love she feels for 
Ferdinand. There, she feels, she loses herself, and that is 
her greatest joy, the very essence of her nature. 

One touch more, at the end, brings the island maiden 
before our eyes, her natural love of beauty, her delicate 
wonder and joy, her ravishment with life ; and these are 
all enhanced by the golden air of love in which she 
moves. We fancy, as we hear her, what she will be in 
the future ; what Milan and Naples will finally say to her 
white soul, which believes only in good. ' O wonder ! ' 
she cries, when she sees Alonzo and the rest of the lords 
crowded round her father, 

How many goodly creatures are there here ! 
How beauteous mankind is ! brave new world, 
That has such people in 't ! 

Ferdinand is not unworthy of her. He comes into the 
play in the most romantic, most dramatic fashion, and in 
lovely poetry : Ariel in the air before him, leading him by 
music, singing delicate songs, full of the spirit of Nature. 
All the charms of magic beauty attend the destined 
youth, enhance the coming lover. And his sorrow for his 
father adds to his appearance a tender, human grace, 
so attractive that Ariel, with his far-off sympathy with 
humanity, enshrines it in song. Thus attended with 
romance he breaks, like a vision, on Miranda — 

Fer. Where should this music be 1 i' th' air or th' earth ? 
It sounds no more ; — and, sure, it waits upon 
Some god o' th' island. Sitting on a bank, 
Weeping again the king my father's wrack, 
This music crept by me upon the waters, 



THE TEMPEST 293 

Allaying both their fury, and my passion, 
"With its sweet air : thence have I folio w'd it, — 
Or it hath drawn me rather, — but 'tis gone. 
No, it begins again. 

Ariel sings. 
Full fathom five thy father lies ; 
Of his bones are coral made : 
Those are pearls that were his eyes : 

Nothing of him that doth fade 
But doth suffer a sea-change 
Into something rich and strange. 
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell : 

(Burthen) ding, dong. 
Hark ! now I hear them, — ding, dong, bell. 
Fer. The ditty does remember my drown'd father. 
This is no mortal business, nor no sound 
That the earth owes : — I hear it now above me. 

So, through so romantic an entrance, should a true lover 
come to see his mistress for the first time; so should 
his mistress see him first ; so keen, so natural was Shake- 
speare's dramatic instinct ! 

At first he is rapt by the music which remembers his 
father. Then he sees Miranda, and his speech, beginning 
with mere admiration and the courtesy of a gentleman, 
suddenly breaks off and flies into love — 

Most sure, the goddess 
On whom these airs attend ! — Vouchsafe, my prayer 
May know if you remain upon this island ; 
And that you will some good instruction give, 
How I may bear me here ; my prime request, 
Which I do last pronounce, is, — you wonder ! — 
If you be maid or no ? 

And, in the joy of it, he thinks light of all he has 
lost; of his own weakness when Prospero enchants his 
strength ; of his imprisonment and toil — 

Might I but through my prison once a day 
Behold this maid : all corners else o' the earth 
Let liberty make use of ; space enough 
Have I in such a prison. 

A charming lover ! Ferdinand, however, is nothing 



294 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

more than the lover. When he thinks justly, as when 

he says 

There be some sports are painful, and their labour 
Delight in them sets off ; some kinds of baseness 
Are nobly undergone, and most poor matters 
Point to rich ends. 

his thoughts are those love has put into his head. He 
had not the capacity for them before love opened his 
soul. He boasts a little of his regard for several women ; 
his has been a butterfly's life ; but now — ' Hear my soul 
speak,' he cries. The rest is boyishness. He will be 
a man hereafter, because he has met Miranda. He is 
not yet. 

Prospero's narration in the first act of the rebellion of 
his brother, and how, banished, he and Miranda come to 
the island, is a masterly preparation for the rest of the 
play ; and it is dramatically varied by his appeals to his 
daughter and her answers. It is a homelike scene. She 
sleeps ; and Ariel appears. His petition for liberty sup- 
plies, rather awkwardly, the motive for another narration ; 
that of Ariel's relation to Prospero ; but the awkwardness 
of the motive is forgotten in the poetic beauty of the tale. 
The visit to Caliban supplies, less awkwardly, the history 
of another portion of the past; and both narrations to- 
gether set us clearly free for the future action of the play. 
We now knoAv all the past. We see Prospero fully, as he 
is ; with Ariel who loves him on one side, and Caliban who 
hates him on the other — two creatures of the elements — 
one of their happy, the other of their hateful, aspects. 
Prospero is human enough to be interesting in spite of his 
art. He loves his child. When he speaks to her his 
words flow into the poetry of admiration. 

The fringed curtains of thine eye advance, 
And say what thou seest yond. 

That is the way he tells Miranda to look at Ferdinand, 



THE TEMPEST 295 

and the pride of a father's love is in the words. He has 
the wisdom of one who has ruled a great state and 
stored up experience of mankind. His warning to Ferdi- 
nand about Miranda, not given in her hearing, is that 
of a man of the world to a youth. Solitude, which, 
when a man has had no sorrow or love, brutalises, teaches 
tolerance and forgiveness to the man who has experienced 
both. His love for his child has kept his heart green, and 
his affections are fresh with the dew of tenderness. He 
has his enemies in his power. He takes full advantage, 
with strength and foresight, of his opportunity ; a strong, 
stern man. But when the time comes to punish the 
guilty, he forgives, after grave reproof; not excusing their 
crime, but with severe blame attached to it. But, having 
once forgiven, he forgets. He bids the past bury itself. 
He will think of it no more. That is the temper of the 
right forgiver. It is the temper of God Himself. And it 
is one of the creatures of God, a creature of the elements, 
not human, not moral in our sense, who leads Prospero to 
a full forgiveness. When Ariel tells him of the distracted 
suffering of the King and his followers, and adds that if 
he saw them, his affections would become tender, Pros- 
pero's noble spirit, passing away from vengeance, resolves 
upon forgiveness. He speaks to Ariel ; 



Hast thou, which art but air, a touch, a 

Of their afflictions, and shall not myself, 

One of their kind, that relish all as sharply 

Passion as they, be kindlier mov'd than thou art ? 

Though with their high wrongs I am struck to the quick 

Yet with my nobler reason 'gainst my fury 

Do I take part ; the rarer action is 

In virtue than in vengeance ; they being penitent, 

The sole drift of my purpose doth extend 

Not a frown further. Go, release them, Ariel ; 

My charms I '11 break, their senses I '11 restore, 

And they shall be themselves. 

There is no trace of the existence of Christianity in the 



296 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

play, but its main drift is to teach forgiveness; not, of 
course, directly, but as art teaches, indirectly. This is 
the note also of Cymbeline and of Winters Tale. If 
Shakespeare in these plays, and especially in this play, 
was taking his leave, as some have conjectured, of the 
stage and the life of the city, it would seem that, having 
passed perhaps through great trouble or wrong, through 
anger, it may be through transient cynicism, (we can 
conjecture much from the temper of the tragedies), 
he now forgave the world and the gods his suffering; 
and felt that in the forgiveness he reached fresh life, 
new happiness, youth in his spirit, sympathy with love ; 
such as we find in Florizel and Perdita, in Miranda and 
Ferdinand. It is a way forgiveness has of making us 
alive again, of lifting all sorrow away. It brings with it 
the restoration of romance. It is well that the greatest 
intellect, the finest imaginative soul that ever lived in 
England, should have left this legacy to us as the result of 
his experience — ' Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive 
them that trespass against us.' And it is also well that 
he should have taken pains to say that when we forgive 
it should be absolute. The memory of the injury is to 
perish from the lips, from the heart of the forgiver, for 
' the quality of mercy is not strained.' 

Let us not burthen our remembrances 
With a heaviness that 's gone. 

That is the voice of Prospero. I would fain think it the 
most inmost feeling of Shakespeare's heart when he 
returned to Stratford, and, in too brief a time, departed to 
find the great Forgiver. 

Ariel, as I said, was with Prospero in this, and I turn to 
this imagined creature, who, though an embodied part of 
the Spirit of Nature, is yet not all apart from the human 
soul. For he knows he has no human soul, and this 



THE TEMPEST 297 

knowledge of his apartness proves him capable of con- 
ceiving something of that from which he is apart. He 
has his own affections, and were they human, he says, 
they would feel with human pain. 

Ariel is ' but air,' the free spirit of the air, subtle, change- 
ful, in incessant motion, lively, all-penetrating like the 
ether, having power in the air and water, in fire, and to 
the depths of the earth. To-day, we might call him 
electricity. But, though at many points the conception 
of Ariel is not apart from that which physical science 
has concerning the finest forms of matter, a scientific 
correlation does not fit his spiritual nature. For here, 
though he does wondrous work, he is a spirit of personal 
gaiety and self-enjoyment, and loves to play; 'a quaint' 
and ' tricksy spirit,' like, when he is most himself, the 
light and fluttering airs of summer. Nor is he only a 
spirit of the air. He is also a spirit of fine fire ; air and 
fire together, they have but one life in him. He im- 
personates them both. And as the ethereal forms of 
matter vibrate between the molecules of the earth and 
water, so Ariel can live in the seas, and the vapours of 
the clouds, and in the depths of the earth. It is thus he 
first appears ; 

All hail, great master ! grave sir, hail ! I come 

To answer thy best pleasure ; be 't to fly, 

To swim, to dive into the fire, to ride 

On the curl'd clouds : to thy strong bidding task 

Ariel and all his quality. 

He flames amazement in the King's ship, burns like 
lightning here and there, sets the sea a-fire, is himself 
the fire, makes the tempest, disperses the fleet, binds and 
looses the winds, calms their rage, lives in the deep bays 
of the shore, can run upon the sharp wind of the north, 
and do business in the veins of the earth when it is baked 
with frost. He can be at will a nymph of the sea, a 



298 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

harpy, any shape he pleases. He, like the air, is always 
invisible, save to the scholar who has mastered him by 
knowledge. If I were a manager, and put The Tempest on 
the stage, Ariel should only be a voice, no one should 
represent him. It is terrible to see him done by a 
dancing girl in a boy's dress. This pervasiveness of his, 
in and through all nature, extends to man ; he knows and 
feels the thoughts of men as if he were the ethereal 
element in which the cells of the brain are floating ; as 
if, being this, he would feel what passions also moved and 
dwelt in the silences of the soul. He knows the plots of 
the conspirators before they are spoken ; he clings to their 
conscience like a remorse. Prospero has no need to call 
him by speech. ' Come with a thought,' he cries to Ariel, 
who is going on his messages. ' Thy thoughts I cleave to,' 
answers Ariel. He has also the quickness of Thought. 
Before the eye can close he is round the earth and back 
again ; 

I drink the air before me, and return 

Or e'er your pulse twice beat. 

This relation of his to thought lifts him above the mere 
presentation of any natural power. He is not human, but 
he can relate himself to humanity. It seems as if some- 
thing of Prospero's soul during their comradeship had 
infiltrated into Ariel. And the relation, on account of 
this, between him and Prospero is almost a relation of 
affection. Prospero admires his charm and beauty, and 
his gracious ways. ' Fine apparition ! ' he calls out when 
he comes in as a nymph of the sea. My ' quaint Ariel ! ' 
my ' dainty Ariel,' are the pleasant terms with which 
his master describes him. When he comes as a harpy, 
Prospero is delighted with the grace the harpy had, 
devouring. Prospero recognises something more spiritual 
in Ariel than his airy charm. He really sympathises with 
Ariel's longing for liberty. Then also he recalls how, 



THE TEMPEST 299 

when the witch Sycorax, having subdued Ariel, laid on 
him gross and shameful commands, the fine nature of 
Ariel refused to do them. ' Thou wast,' he says, ' a spirit 
too delicate 

To act her earthly and abhorr'd commands. 

This exquisite refinement of nature is then, as it were, a 
kind of conscience in him. When their one quarrel is 
over, they are together like friend and friend, even with 
the love of friendship. Ariel wishes to be loved ; 

Ari. Do you love me, master ? no ? 
Pros. Dearly, my delicate Ariel ! 

And when Ariel sings his lively song of freedom, Prospero, 

charmed, cries out in admiration 

Why, that 's my dainty Ariel ! I shall miss thee ; 
But yet thou shalt have freedom. 

But far beyond any companionship of feeling with his 
master is Ariel's longing for freedom, to have his own 
control. Of course, being a spirit of the unchartered air, 
he desires only to obey himself. It is a desire harm- 
less in him, whose limits are set by law. But Prospero 
is a foreign law, and however kindly it be exercised, it 
is against Ariel's choice, independent of the law of his 
being. Therefore this bird of the air must escape his 
cage. All he does in it is toil : 'What? is there more toil?' 
Outside is joy, the soft life of the summer breeze, for, 
beyond Prospero's commands, Ariel makes no tempests, 
no disturbance. He is delicate. Music is his expression ; 
the tabor and pipe, thin sweet instruments, are his to 
play. He sings, like the light wind through the trees and 
over the grass of the moor and among the rocks, clear, 
ringing, elfin notes. All he sings is poetry, all his speech 
is song. The life he lives is the life of the elements, and 
his songs are of their doings. Lamb's saying of his song, 
' Pull fathom five thy father lies,' that it is ' of the water 
watery, and that its feeling seems to resolve itself into the 



300 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

element it contemplates/ illustrates this nature in him, 
and itself is poised in the melody of ocean. His other 
song — ' Come unto these yellow sands ' — is so evanescent, 
so delicate, so rippling, that no criticism can touch it 
without hurting it. It is of the shore, the moving sand, 
and the sea. Only when, in the calm of twilight, we see 
the long-curving edge of half- slumbering foam, when the 
wave is nothing but the lift of the tide, and hear the 
hushing murmur of it on the sand, as it leaves the fan- 
tastic outline of the height it reached before its retreat — 
do we understand the delicate playing of Ariel, the dance 
he leads of sprites that foot it featly here and there. 

Come unto these yellow sands, 

And then take hands : 
Curtsied when you have and kiss'd, — 

The wild waves whist, — 
Foot it featly here and there ; 
And, sweet sprites, the burthen bear. 

More delicate, dainty, and ethereal is Ariel as the soft 

summer wafts of air which come and go with fluttering 

pleasure. They make the faint blossoms tremble where 

the bee can enter, they rock the cowslip's bell, and stir 

the fur on the bat's wing, when the owls call to the night. 

Where the bee sucks, there suck I 
In a cowslip's bell I lie ; 
There I couch when owls do cry. 
On the bat's back I do fly 
After summer merrily : 

This is Ariel's farewell to Prospero, this the life he hopes 
to live in freedom. That is his true being ; aerial gentle- 
ness, the spirit of the faint swift winds. The metre helps 
the conception. The dactyls are like the pulse of wings. 

Merrily, merrily shall I live now, 

Under the blossom that hangs on the bough. 

Thus Ariel passes into the elements. But Shakespeare, 
mastered while he wrote by his shaping spirit of imagina- 
tion, has made him more than elemental, has given him a 



THE TEMPEST 301 

personality, touched with gleams of our humanity, as of 
old he did, but not so fully, to Oberon. Only Ariel is 
more elemental than Oberon, and, strange enough, also 
more human. Prospcro has entered into him. Therefore 
round him collects the greater interest. Oberon we may 
meet in the woods by moonlight. Ariel is always with us, 
like the air. We breathe his spirit every day. 

Over against him is Caliban, much more human than 
Ariel, begotten of a witch by an earth-demon ; half of his 
gross father's quality, linked to the baser elements of the 
earth ; half of his mother's wicked humanity. Evil as he 
is, he is made capable, by Prospero's early education of 
him, of, perhaps, a higher life in the future. Of this 
Shakespeare, in his pity, gives us a few hints. 

Apart from his human traits, Caliban represents the 
gross, brutal, unwholesome elements of the earth, those 
that are the curse and plague of men ; and these elements 
are made more brutal because they are concentrated 
into one who, himself a savage and descended from a 
villainous hag, lives solely for his senses and appetites, 
as deformed in mind as in body. When he is lifted be- 
yond mere sense and appetite by the spirit of hate, he 
tends to become an evil spirit of the earth, an elemental 
demon. Then all his curses are of the earth earthy, and 
of the destroying terrors of the earth. 

As wicked clew as e'er my mother brush'd 
With raven's feather from unwholesome fen 
Drop on you both ! a south-west blow on ye, 
And blister you all o'er ! 

All the charms 
Of Sycorax, toads, beetles, bats, light on you ! 

The red plague rid you, 
For learning me your language ! 

All the infections that the sun sucks up 

From bogs, fens, flats, on Prosper fall, and make him 

By inch-meal a disease ! 



302 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

That is not only the witch- wickedness of his mother in 
him ; it is also the deadliness of the earth. Shakespeare 
just touches that much of the supernatural into him. 
Otherwise, he is no more than the low- type savage, made 
by his deformity a hater and envier of a higher race. 
He has the instincts and nature-knowledge of the savage, 
knows the whole island, all that his mother-earth pro- 
duces, the freshets, springs, brine pits, the miry fens, the 
berry-bearing shrubs, the apes that chatter to him, the 
hedgehogs that prick his feet, the adders that sting 
and hiss — 

I prithee, let me bring thee where crabs grow ; 
And I with my long nails will dig thee pig-nuts ; 
Show thee a jay's nest and instruct thee how 
To snare the nimble marmozet ; I '11 bring thee 
To clust'ring filberts, and sometimes I '11 get thee 
Young scamels from the rock. Wilt thou go with me ? 

Like the savage also who lives close to Nature, and 
impersonates her doings, all he speaks, when he is excited, 
is poetical. Shakespeare puts the most of what he says 
into blank verse. Caliban only begins to lose his imagina- 
tive elements when he associates with Stephano and 
Trinculo, who would not have a poetical thought, if they 
could live for a thousand years. Even the little education 
which Prospero has given him has injured his imagination. 
Otherwise, when his senses are pleased, and when he 
hears the music Ariel is always making, his heart is 
stirred, his sense of beauty touched. Shakespeare does 
not leave this poor soul, cursed from his birth, without 
our pity. Trinculo trembles with fear when Ariel's pipe 
and tabor play. 'Be not afeard/ cries Caliban, and 
Prospero himself could scarce speak in better verse, 

Be not afeard : the isle is full of noises, 

Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight, and hurt not. 

Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments 

Will hum about mine ears ; and sometime voices, 

That, if I then had wak'd after long sleep, 



THE TEMPEST 303 

Will make iue sleep again : and then, in dreaming, 
The clouds methought would open, and show riches 
Ready to drop upon me ; that, when I wak'd, 
I cried to dream again. 

Thus ' music for a time doth change his nature.' One 
feels that he is capable of redemption ; but Stephano and 
Trinculo, deaf to sweet sounds, are in this life irredeem- 
ably the same. And before the close of the play, Caliban 
is on the way to conversion. He is far more intelligent 
than Stephano, who is more intelligent than Trinculo. 
Prospero has despaired of him, but Shakespeare does not. 
Even when he is drunk, he goes straight to his purpose 
of murder, and cares nothing for the shining garments 
which enrapture his companions. ' Let it alone, thou fool; 
it is but trash.' And when ho is punished, and Prospero 
forgives him, he cries ; 

I '11 be wise hereafter, 

And seek for grace. What a thrice-double ass 

Was I, to take this drunkard for a god, 

And worship this dull fool ! 

Critical of others and of himself, we see his intellect 
emerging. When he can argue thus, the part he plays 
in Renan's philosophic drama does not seem impossible. 

When Caliban is drunk, he is no longer the brute. 
Curiously enough, one might argue that it was alcohol 
that opened his mind ; Bacchus the Emancipator has to 
do with him. When he is drunk for the first time, he 
ceases to be only brutish clay. The spark of soul in him 
begins to breathe and expand. Before alcohol paralyses, 
it stings the brain-cells, kindles the fire in the soul, opens 
ideal hopes, desires for abstract aims. In a savage like 
Caliban these would be wild and unformed, and if 
drunkenness deepened, would soon slip back into sensu- 
ality and cruelty. But while the first stimulus lasted, 
they would belong to the soul, and emerge in such 
imaginative pleasure as Caliban felt in the music of the 



304 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

island. Then, being in a nature in which reason "was 
undeveloped, they would further appear as whirling and 
shapeless desires, which, in the circumstances of Caliban, 
would be for liberty, such wild liberty as the uneducated 
revolutionist cries for. It is the first idea of Caliban when 
he is drunk, and what he says is strangely like the blind 
shouting of the mob, who know not what they affirm or 
what they deny : 

'Ban, 'Ban, Ca— Caliban 
Has a new master — Get a new man. 
Freedom, high-day ! high-day, freedom ! freedom 1 
high-day ! freedom ! 

Ariel also desires freedom, and it is interesting to compare 
his cry for it — the cry of a delicate spirit — with this 
drunken howl of Caliban. But howl or not, the concep- 
tion of freedom means the possibility of progress. 

We cannot pass over Stephano and Trinculo. They are 
the humorous reflection, on a lower level, of the King and 
the nobles ; of what Alonzo and his nobles might be, if 
they had been born as grooms and butlers. And their 
conspiracy to slay Prospero, and be kings of the island, 
is the ludicrous image of the conspiracy of Sebastian and 
Antonio to slay Alonzo, even of the conspiracy in the past 
which drove Prospero from his throne. That is Shake- 
speare, fanciful and fantastic, doubling of his plot; his 
addition of a lining of gaiety to the cloke of seriousness. 

Stephano and Trinculo are Shakespeare's last study of 
the drunkard. It is the habit to speak of them together, 
but Shakespeare took pains to differentiate them. They 
have quite distinct characters, though they belong to the 
same type. They are set into contrast with Caliban ; 
the savages of civilisation with the natural savage ; and 
Caliban is the better man. They are quite useless on the 
island ; the sweet sounds of it are nothing to them ; they 
do not understand Caliban when he is poetical. Caliban 



THE TEMPEST 305 

becomes an idcaliser when lie is drunk ; they lower every- 
thing, when they are drunk, to their own level. Caliban's 
mind develops under liquor; theirs is quite brutalised, save 
that they have not lost the gross, natural humour of their 
class. They are both amusing ; and curiously enough, but, 
when one thinks of it, quite a piece of natural truth, 
Trinculo, the jester, when he is drunk, is not so entertain- 
ing as Stephano, the butler. Each, in drink, loses his 
conventional habit. Caliban, drunk, loses his fear of 
Prospero, and plans his master's murder with audacity, 
even with ability. Trinculo's fears redouble. Stephano 
is not afraid of anything, but his vulgarity of mind, when 
he is drunk, rises into its perfect consummation. It 
is almost ideal. His last speech in which — having been 
pinched and cramped, and hunted with dogs — his courage 
which endears him to us is still high and is heightened 
by the liquor in him, is inimitably invented by Shake- 
speare. He comes, in the stolen apparel, all bedraggled, 
before the fine company, and is not a bit ashamed or 
depressed. In his drunkenness, he is even for the first 
time intelligent. 

Every man shift for all the rest, and let no man take care for him- 
self ; for all is but fortune. — Coragio ! bully- monster, Coragio ! 

I take little interest in Antonio, Sebastian, Alonzo, and 
the rest. The scene where they first talk together on the 
island is the dullest in the play — so dull that I suspect 
that Shakespeare is here satirising the stupidity which 
passed for wit in court society. Even Gonzalo, the good 
lord, a variation of Polonius, is not a stirring personage. 
Shakespeare always mocks, with a certain gentleness, the 
old diplomatist, the counsellor who has grown into a fossil 
at the court. Gonzalo is good, but he has been made 
unintelligent by his own prudence. We forgive, however, 
his stupidity, because he has not lost his loving-kindness. 
Where he is intelligent, he is so by affection, 
u 



306 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

Antonio, having once conspired, is quite ready to con- 
spire again, and leads Sebastian to the slaying of Alonzo ; 
as in the past he has himself slain, as he supposes, 
Prospero. His nature, we see, has not been changed 
during all these years. He is a traitor in grain. Sin has 
multiplied from sin in him, and, when he is maddened 
by Ariel, his conscience does not awaken. It has been 
seared. What he feels is envy, hatred, and wrath. He 
draws his sword to slay. But Alonzo, who had helped 
Antonio to do the wrong to Prospero, now softened by the 
loss of his son, shaken by his shipwreck — himself no 
mocker, like Sebastian and Antonio, of goodness in Gon- 
zalo — is awakened into repentance by the invisible voice 
of Ariel which recalls his guilt. Few words have better 
expressed the loud shout of conscience, roused to action 
after a long sleep, than his cry ; 

0, it is monstrous ! monstrous ! 
Methought the billows spoke and told me of it ; 
The winds did sing it to me ; and the thunder, 
That deep and dreadful organ-pipe, pronounc'd 
The name of Prosper : it did bass my trespass. 
Therefore my son i' the ooze is bedded ; and 
I '11 seek him deeper than e'er plummet sounded, 
And with him there lie mudded. 

So, he flies, distracted, over the island, with Sebastian 
and Antonio. They are maddened, and are still evil ; he 
is maddened but repentant ; and, because he is penitent, 
Prospero is comforting in the end to him, but stern as a 
judge to the others. Indeed, it was dramatically neces- 
sary that Alonzo should not be hardened in his guilt, 
otherwise there would not be easy room for his son to be 
betrothed to Prospero's daughter. 

And now we come to the conclusion. Prospero, by his 
art, is almost supernatural, and has made the island, and 
all that occurs in it, supernatural. He is removed, in this 



THE TEMPEST 307 

way, from common humanity. He acts like a divine 
Providence, moulding nature and human wills to his 
purposed end. That end, being good, makes his action 
good. But it would cease to be good, and all the previous 
action would be stained, if the thought of vengeance on 
the guilty which he has entertained so long should pass 
beyond the stern doing of justice into personal revenge; 
should bar forgiveness out of his heart. He would then 
fulfil no longer the part of Providence which embodies law, 
not the caprice of the passions. Therefore he forgives. 
And his humanity is secured. We know he will be a noble 
ruler when he returns to Milan, a man among men. 

Irresponsible power, that terrible area of temptation, 
has not injured his character, and, in that, he is one of 
the noblest of Shakespeare's men. But he had great 
allies. His little daughter kept him human; his love 
for her, as she grew to womanhood, strengthened his 
humanity. Yet, he is still isolated from men by his all- 
potent art. He who can command at will the forces 
of nature, who can see the thoughts of men by Ariel 
who cleaves to them, is too divided from common 
humanity to enter into the world, and wisely play his 
part therein. He feels that himself. He is returning to 
live with his fellow-men. He will, therefore, be only a man. 
Therefore he makes the great renunciation ; he abjures 
his magic. This is one of the wisest, one of the best 
imagined thoughts in Shakespeare. Goethe, in the 
Faust, was not capable of it. And the high nobility of 
the act makes Prospero's expression of it most noble in 
poetry ; 

Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes, and groves ; 
And ye, that on the sands with printless foot 
Do chase the ebbing Neptune and do fly him 
When he comes back ; you demi-puppets, that 
By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make, 



308 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

Whereof the ewe not bites ; and you, whose pastime 

Is to make midnight mushrooms ; that rejoice 

To hear the solemn curfew ; by whose aid, — 

Weak masters though ye be — I have bedimm'd 

The noontide sun, call'd forth the mutinous winds, 

And 'twixt the green sea and the azur'd vault 

Set roaring war : to the dread-rattling thunder 

Have I given fire and rifted Jove's stout oak 

With his own bolt : the strong-bas'd promontory 

Have I made shake ; and by the spurs pluck'd up 

The pine and cedar : graves at my command 

Have wak'd their sleepers, op'd, and let them forth 

By my so potent art. But this rough magic 

I here abjure ; and, when I have requir'd 

Some heavenly music, — which even now I do, — 

To work mine end upon their senses that 

This airy charm is for, I'll break my staff, 

Bury it certain fathoms in the earth, 

And, deeper than did ever plummet sound, 

I'll drown my book. [Solemn music. 

And so, the enchantment is over. Ariel has regained 
his elemental freedom. Perhaps, he sleeps, every spring, 
in the cowslip's bell, or we may catch his eyes, in summer 
twilights, as the bats wheel by our seat under the trees. 
All the nymphs who danced on the yellow sands, all the 
goblins who pinched Caliban, have fled to their homes. 
The music, the sweet sounds, that filled the air of the 
island, are heard no more. The stormy sea that circled 
round the overhanging cliffs, rolls now over an empty 
space ; for the dim island, its haunted groves, its yellow 
sands, its pines that plumed the ridges above the moor- 
land, are all sunk, with Prospero's book, deeper than 
plummet ever sounded. The isle came, enchanted, out 
of space ; it has returned, like Ariel, to the elements. All 
was illusion. Only humanity remains, housed in Milan 
and in Naples; only love lasts, glowing in the heart of 
Miranda and Ferdinand. These also, in their time, de- 
parted, and only poetry is left — the eternal possession 
of the soul, now and in the world beyond — the true 



THE TEMPEST 309 

enchantment; and the writer of it, the true Prospero, 
the true enchanter. 

Indeed, it has been said that Shakespeare pictured 
himself as Prospero, and said farewell in this play to that 
dramatic poetry in which he had wrought so many en- 
chantments, and seen, through Ariel, his familiar spirit of 
imagination whom he now set free, into the secret of 
Nature and the hearts of men. His magic staff he buried 
now, and deeper than ever plummet sounded, he drowned 
his book. 1 He had created a whole world, and now he 
would rest from creation. * 

The argument might be carried further. It might be 
said that Shakespeare, looking back on the work he had 
now laid aside, and on life's comedy and tragedy, expressed 
his judgment of it in what he said to Ferdinand and 
Miranda concerning the pageant he had shown them. 
All we think so vital, the glory, love, and suffering of 
the world, the cloud-capped philosophy and the solemn 
temples of law and religion, the earth itself, and all the 
human struggle on it, are illusion, the flitting in a dream 
of the Soul of the world, itself a dream, to and fro through 
empty space; and all its actors, like the spirits in the 
masque, phantoms in the dream, drawn out of the visionary 
imagination to make a show, and vanishing into the mist, 
to leave not a rack behind. It was thus, some theorist 
might say, that Shakespeare thought of all this world 



1 Many years ago, Emile Montegut elaborated this theory in a long and 
admirable article in, if I remember rightly, the Revue des deux Mondes. 
It was so well done that it almost convinced the reader, at least for a time, 
that it was a true theory. There can, however, be no certainty in any of 
these theories. They are interesting as excursions into the unknowable, 
but they remain guesses, and no more. One may, I think, argue from the 
general temper of a play to the temper of the writer's mind when he wrote 
it, especially when the same kind of temper, though in different moods, 
prevails through a succession of plays, as in the great tragedies. But 
Shakespeare was so impersonal in his art, that ouch argument has not 
much weight. 



310 LECTURES ON SHAKESPEARE 

when he was near departure from it, and quote these 
famous lines : 

These our actors, 
As I foretold you, were all spirits and 
Are melted into air, into thin air : 
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, 
The cloud-capp'd towers, the gorgeous palaces, 
The solemn temples, the great globe itself, 
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve, 
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, 
Leave not a rack behind. "We are such stuff 
As dreams are made on, and our little life 
Is rounded with a sleep. 

This is a thought common to the race. It seems, so 
common is it, to belong to the original texture of 
humanity. In certain circumstances, varying as tempera- 
ments vary, it is sure to slip into the mind. Most often 
it slips out again : sometimes it stays ; and it is one of 
the main thoughts of a religion held by many millions of 
men. Shakespeare was sure to have felt it moving in his 
mind, and to have known that it would move in the minds 
of many of his characters, in forms varying with the 
various characters. It is expressed again and again in 
the plays. It is here expressed in lines of such uncommon 
force and beauty that it ceases to seem common ; it is as 
if no one felt it before Prospero shaped it. And it exactly 
fits the temper of his mind at this instant of the play ; 
naturally emerging from the scene and the circumstances. 
But Prospero — and, indeed, Shakespeare, if we mix him 
up with Prospero — was far too sane and too experienced 
a character to imagine that life was illusion, or that we 
were the stuff of dreams, or that sleep rounded our little 
life. No one should quote the passage as an explanation 
of Shakespeare's theory of life, only as far as 'rounded 
with a sleep.' The rest is Prospero's (or Shakespeare's) 
indication that his picture of the story of humanity arose 
from the passing weakness of a vexed and weary brain. 



THE TEMPEST 311 

The philosophy of illusion is the philosophy of tired 
people. 

Sir, I am vex'd : 

Bear with my weakness ; my old brain is troubled. 

Be not disturb'd with my infirmity. 

If you be pleas'd, retire into my cell 

And there repose : a turn or two I '11 walk, 

To still my beating mind. 

After all, he need not have taken the trouble to explain 
to Ferdinand and Miranda that they were only alive in a 
dream. The lovers knew better. 



Printed by T. and A. Constable, Printers to His Majesty 
at the Edinburgh University Press 



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